Arctic fox ‘stowaway’ lived long life at zoo

Published 7:00 pm Friday, December 30, 2011

SEATTLE — An elderly arctic fox who wound up in a Seattle zoo after stowing away in a trash container on a tiny island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain has been euthanized because of age-related ailments.

Experts at Woodland Park Zoo estimate Feliks was 3 to 5 years old when he was found in 2004 in a container shipped to the Port of Seattle from the island of Shemya.

He was underweight, had ear mites and hind limb weakness and was judged a poor candidate for reintroduction to the wild. With good food and medical care he recovered and lived a long life in the zoo’s Northern Trail exhibit with mountain goats and a female arctic fox.

Zoo curator Dr. Jennifer Pramuk says many arctic foxes in the wild don’t live past age 3.

He was euthanized Thursday.

Typically weighing no more than 10 pounds, the arctic fox has a gray or blue coat in the summer and a thick, warm white coat in the winter.