'I'm
a fox. It's January. I'm hungry. I want a meal. My food, however, is buried 3
feet down, deep in the snow, hiding. It's alive, in motion, and very small, being
a mouse.' So how does an above-ground fox catch an underground mouse? Well, the
answer is nothing short of astonishing. Think about this ... an ordinary fox can stalk a mole, mouse, vole or shrew from a distance of about 8m (~25 feet), which means its food is making a barely audible rustling sound, hiding almost two car lengths away. And yet our fox hurls itself into the air — in an arc determined by the fox, the speed and trajectory of the scurrying mouse, any breezes, the thickness of the ground cover, the depth of the snow — and somehow, it can land straight on top of the mouse, pinning it with its forepaws or grabbing the mouse's head with its teeth.