Foxes Take Fairfax Residents' Unguarded Shoes For Use As Toys

FAIRFAX CITY, VA — Shoes left out on front porches in neighborhoods along Old Lee Highway in Fairfax City were going missing. Residents had been leaving their shoes outside their front doors instead of wearing them inside their houses, especially in the age of coronavirus. They’d wake up the next morning, and the shoes would be gone.

Residents started investigating who had been stealing their shoes since early April. Many of the shoes had disappeared from neighborhoods near Historic Blenheim on Old Lee Highway.

The Fairfax City Police Department also grew curious about the missing shoes in the Old Lee Hills Civic Association area of the city.

“After investigation, input from our community and some ‘digging’ by Historic Blenheim/Civil War Interpretive Center, it was determined that area foxes were taking the shoes and using them as toys in their dens!” the Fairfax City police reported Friday.

Historic Blenheim is a Greek Revival-style brick farmhouse built just prior to the Civil War. It is nationally significant for the quantity and quality of examples of Civil War inscriptions. More than 122 signatures, pictographs, games and thoughts were left on the house walls by Union soldiers during their occupation of the Fairfax Court House area between 1862 and 1863.

The Historic Blenheim estate now sits on about 12 acres of land owned by the City of Fairfax. About four acres are wooded, including the foxhole area.

Initially, 12 shoes — only one full pair — were found in between four foxholes on the grounds of Historic Blenheim near the bicycle path.

Last week, the staff at Historic Blenheim posted a flyer on a fence that explained foxes “often gather such items for kits as toys.” Residents are welcome to visit the area and take their shoe if they see one that was taken by the foxes.

In mid-April, the son of Andrea Loewenwarter, an historic resources specialist at Historic Blenheim, told her that three of his shoes were missing from the family’s front porch — one shoe from each pair of three. Loewenwarter and her family live across the street from Historic Blenheim in the Old Lee Hills neighborhood. Her son thought the missing shoes were a prank.

Loewenwarter’s husband posted news of the incident to the civic association’s website and neighbors responded that it was probably a fox that took the shoes. His online research confirmed that foxes use shoes as toys for their kits.

Jim Gillespie, Loewenwarter’s husband, said he occasionally sees foxes in the neighborhood but believes they’ve become more active since the COVID-19 crisis reduced traffic on Old Lee Highway and on neighborhood streets.

A few days later, one of Loewenwarter’s co-workers told her that he had seen a couple of shoes below the fox hole on the Historic Blenheim property. She went to investigate and first came upon her son’s sandal and then began to find various shoes in the wooded area beyond the one hole.

“I collected 12 shoes and also found my son’s sneaker,” she said in an email to Patch. “However, I could not find his heavy leather hiking boot.”

Last week, one of Loewentwarter’s friends accidentally left her hiking boots on the front porch and they disappeared.

“I brought her up to the site and we didn’t find her boot, but we did find my son’s hiking boot, more garden gloves — another favorite — and 23 other shoes scattered about in the woods and along the edge of the property,” she said.

Residents are instructed not to enter the nearby woods where undergrowth is covering the fox dens. “It is a sensitive area and needs to be protected,” the Historic Blenheim staff said.

Anyone who lives in the area and is looking for a missing shoe can email Historic Blenheim at historicresources@fairfaxva.gov and the staff will try to help them out.

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