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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rappahannock New, Staff Writer
Furry, cuddly, bright eyed and bushy tailed, the pups housed in cages behind Thomas Baldwin’s Sperryville fruit stand would bring chortles of delight and cries of mom, oh mom, please can we take one home!” from any youngster hungry for a pet.
But these puppies are wild things, baby blue foxes that are the newest addition to Baldwin’s fur business.
The Sperryville entrepreneur became a blue fox owner in April, starting with two pair purchased for SI ,600. Born in captivity, the gyps and dogs have none of the reticence about mating behind bars that spoils so many experiments in breeding wild animals. One gyp lost her litter but the other presented Baldwin with ten pups.
Initially, he had planned to raise the foxes for pelts which sell at $285 a piece in Hong Kong. Limpid brown eyes peeping out from puffs of blue fur weakened his resolve. “I don’t think that I could slaughter them. They’re too pretty. I just like them too much,” he admitted.
Soft hearted or not, Baldwin is still a business man. So instead of skinning the pups, he’s selling them as breeding stock, a pair at a time. The first two departed last week, leaving Thomas with $600 extra in his wallet. Multiply that by five and it’s obvious that Baldwin will get a reasonable return on his investment in the first year. And a dollar value can’t be attached to the pleasure that the lovely animals have given him.
Life in a cage steals the natural beauty and grace
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