“[It’s] about the strangest but most amazing thing we’ve ever seen.”
For years, wildlife enthusiasts Dan Ballard and Jane Hunter have documented the animals wandering through their sprawling Austin, Texas, backyard. Their YouTube channel, Texas Backyard Wildlife, features countless fascinating moments — but in 2020, they captured something so unusual it left them stunned.
“[It’s] about the strangest but most amazing thing we’ve ever seen here on camera,” Ballard said in a video about the event.
The footage shows a mother raccoon stumbling through the brush with her baby in tow. She appears to be searching for a safe place to leave him while she forages for food and water. Eventually, she finds what she thinks is a suitable spot: a hollow tree stump. Gently, she sets her kit down and walks away.
But she couldn’t have been more mistaken.
“This is a fox den,” Ballard explained. “Mama raccoon seems to be thinking that it’s actually a raccoon day care.”
At first, the father fox hisses at the raccoon kit. But rather than harming him, the fox backs off. The little raccoon then climbs down into the den, where several baby foxes are resting. At first cautious, the fox pups quickly grow curious about their unexpected visitor.
“The little fox pups come in and check on him,” Ballard narrated. “After a while, it seems like they decided that, ‘Wow, I guess we have a pet.’”
This outcome is astonishing, since according to Wildlife Rescue League, foxes are natural predators of raccoons and are especially likely to attack young kits. Instead, the baby raccoon spent the day inside the den unharmed, coexisting peacefully with the fox family.
Later that night, while the foxes slept, the raccoon kit slipped away and was reunited with his mom.
“They wander off into the sunrise,” Ballard said. “And live happily ever after.”