Finding freedom: Rescued foxes brave missiles, wars to arrive at San Diego home

Four Russian foxes have safely arrived in their new home of San Diego County after surviving cramped cages, war zones and a missile attack on their yearlong route to rescue.

When animal conservationist Amy Bassett first heard that four rare baby foxes were spending their lives in cramped cages at a research facility in the middle of Siberia, she promised to be their “mama bear.”

She pledged to save them before the facility might euthanize them by bringing them to her wildlife paradise in Santa Ysabel — the Judith A. Bassett Canid Education and Conservation Center.

Bassett had rescued a dozen foxes like the foursome before. But she never expected that Alexei, Anya Besha, Lyudmila and Valentina Maria’s homecoming would be a yearlong fight that would ensnare her and the foursome in two wars, geopolitical chess and an Iranian missile strike.

But she kept fighting, and just in time for July 4, Bassett made good on her promise. The foxes arrived at their new home, now with the freedom to run, play and live their lives outside of a cramped cage.

“It’s no man gets left behind,” Bassett said. “We promised these four that we would give them a forever home and a life with purpose.”

“I felt like I had no choice but to honor my commitment to them because if I failed anywhere along the line, they may be killed.”

Route to rescue

Bassett thought by the time her foxes were onboard their flight from Moscow to their new home in California two weeks ago that the hard part was over.

After a year of fighting the shipping restrictions the U.S. and Russia had thrown at each other, she had finally won her foxes a passage to safety.

Then, the missiles started dropping. The moment they did, Bassett knew.

She had stayed up all night tracking the foxes’ flight, watching as the small dot traveled closer and closer to her. The plane was set for a layover in Qatar.

But as the plane traveled toward the gulfside country, Iran dropped over a dozen missiles on a U.S. military base near Qatar’s typically quiet capital city of Doha on June 23.

“My foxes are literally flying in the air to Qatar,” Bassett recalled thinking as she helplessly watched the flight tracker. “We had no idea at that point what was going to happen to them.”

The foxes landed in Qatar unscathed, but the journey wasn’t over.

Officials weren’t allowing any planes to take off from Qatar due to the missiles, so the foxes awaited their fates in small crates without water. That all changed when Bassett found out.

“I was mama bear yelling at everybody from Qatar — everyone, everywhere,” Bassett said.

The next day, Qatar’s airspace opened up, and the foxes’ journey to freedom resumed. Two days later, they came home for the first time.

New home

The first time Bassett met the foxes in person when they finally landed at Los Angeles International Airport, they were skinny and scared as strangers surrounded them.

Over the entire year she had spent fighting for the foxes, Bassett had never been able to meet them in Siberia because of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. But Bassett wasn’t a stranger to the four foxes for long once they met.

The foursome are a rare type of Russian fox specifically bred by researchers to love human interaction. Unlike the sly, conniving and flighty archetypes that foxes typically take on in fairy tales and folklore, Russian domesticated foxes act almost like friendly lap dogs.

Two weeks since they’ve moved to California, the foursome have gradually begun to come out of their shells as Bassett and her team give them the love, time and space to recover from the lifetimes they’ve spent deprived of human interaction.

After the foxes spend a few months recovering, they may one day get to do what they love most — play and interact with the public. Once they’re comfortable, the foursome may join the conservation center’s hands-on meet and greets, where San Diegans will get the chance to pet, play, observe and learn about Russian domesticated foxes.

But for now, the foxes are just enjoying their new home — and the endless treats, toys, cuddles and love Bassett and her team give them.

“We’ll just see how their personalities start to shine and come out,” Bassett said. “They tell us who they want to be.”

The conservation center is currently taking donations from the public to build larger enclosures for the foxes on its website.

Members of the public can also sponsor one of the four foxes, which pays for the fox’s food, veterinary care, treats and toys. Sponsorships range from $50 for a month to $450 for a year.