Fennec

You foxy little thing, you

Today’s New York Times Spelling Bee letters:

C, F, L, N, O, U, and center E (all words must include E).

Merriam-Webster says…

Silly little dictionary! Don’t you know fennec can’t possibly be a word if the New York Times says it ain’t?

For further fascinating facts, check out the Spelling Bee Master.

What’s your favorite dord* from today’s puzzle?

My Two Cents

We get to talk about animals two days in a row. Yesterday we discussed the kiang, the biggest wildest ass of them all. Today we’ll talk about a cute little fox. No not the Samantha Foxes known on both sides of “the pond”.

The British Samantha Fox will turn 55 this week; unfortunately, the American Samantha Fox passed away last year from Covid-related complications.

Finnicky fennec

So, who wants to read about a nucleole or a lunule on a relaxing Sunday afternoon? Let’s see them hands! No one, right? That’s why I picked that cute little fox in the big photo at the beginning. No one minds talking about adorable animals any day of the week.

Why fennec is not considered a valid word in today’s Spelling Bee is beyond me. I mean, it’s not like a fennec was part of the cast of a movie that made more than a billion dollars at the box office worldwide in 2016. Right?

Worng. Very wrong. As wrong as the spelling of “wrong” at the beginning of this paragraph. (See what I did there? I was too lazy to fix a typo, so instead I wrote two whole sentences about it. How’s that for coming up with a clever way to increase this article’s reading time?)

Remember Zootopia? It was an animated Disney film from five years ago, featuring a fox that was neither of the Samanthas mentioned earlier.

The main characters are rabbit Juddy Hopps (voiced in the U.S. by Ginnifer Goodwin) and fox Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman). Hopps is a rookie cop at the Zootopia PD, while Wilde is a small-time con artist.

Well, Wilde has a sidekick named Finnick (voiced by Tom Lister, Jr.) who just happens to be a fennec fox.

So it’s not like the New York Times can claim fennec is an obscure word anymore. After all, gazillions of kids forced gazillions of parents to watch the movie. The fennec’s name is Finnick, for goodness sake! Even if you don’t remember fennec, you might remember the name, which sounds very similar.

Maybe the Times has a beef with Disney. Who doesn’t, these days?

To be or not to be… a fox

Remember three paragraphs ago when I said “fennec fox”? No? Well, trust me. It was three paragraphs ago, and I wrote it.

It’s not as redundant as it may seem.

You see, there is a heated debate among foxy scientists… I mean, fox scientists, about whether or not the fennec is actually a fox or not. Some of the arguments given against are the fact that the fennec has only 32 pairs of chromosomes (other fox species have between 35 and 39) and that fennecs live in packs, like wild dogs and wolves do, while most other fox species live solitary, monastic, stoic lives. In fact, originally the fennec was classified as belonging to the Canis (dog family) genus.

Arguments for the fennec being a fox? C’mon! Take a look at the cutie-pie. It looks soooo cute, just like a tiny fox with big ears.

Even Gustav thought they were cute. Then again, that what sort of his job.

The fennec is a nocturnal fox of the Sahara Desert and the Sinai Peninsula. Now you know why I said earlier that there was a heated debate about it. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

The fennec is the smallest fox in existence, and also by far the most adorable. Its ears are sooooo big… (cue audience asking “How big are they?”) that this fox can hear prey moving underground. I would also hope it can hear its predators above ground and in the air, because jackals and eagle-owls love to feast on these tiny creatures.

Fennecs live in huge family burrows that interconnect with the families of other fennecs. When I say huge, I mean bigger than most Manhattan one-bedroom apartments. And speaking of Manhattan and apartments, fennecs are also coveted as pets. Add that to the list of exotic animals that some New Yorkers have been known to keep in their homes, like tarantulas, ferrets, pot-bellied pigs, and Brooklynites.

Fennecs eat small things: tiny rodents, teeny lizards, small birds (and their eggs), but also fruits and even tubers. They usually breed once a year, but they make it count. Sex can last for almost three hours. After mating, the male fennec suddenly becomes very aggressive. Probably because he knows he’ll have to wait a whole year to have sex again for three hours. But this aggressiveness is good because it helps Jack Fennec protect and care for a pregnant Jill Fennec.

After the litter is born, both partners help raise the puppies, which stay in the family even when a new brood arrives the next year. Fennecs have been known to live at most thirteen to fourteen years. That adds up to about 40 hours total of lifetime sex for the fennecs. So about double that of most modern marriages.

Wow, just reading about the lives of fennecs makes you realize how cute they are. But still, we can use another picture, right?

The cuteness is overwhelming.

And yet, don’t you dare mention how adorable fennecs are to the editors of the Spelling Bee puzzle. Because they already decided that fennec is a dord.*

You can check out my previous entry on another dord* here:

*What the heck is a dord, you ask? Here’s the answer: