Take-away

A red fox checks a pizza box on a promenade in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. Red foxes have been making appearances in Ashkelon, drawn out from the seclusion of the desert dunes by the coronavirus lockdown that has kept people off the streets. The animals, usually a rare sight in busy urban areas, have a biblical resonance. In the “Book of Lamentations”, the Jewish temple site in Jerusalem is described as so desolate that “foxes prowl upon it”. In the Mediterranean seaport, a family of foxes has become a regular feature — nosing through discarded food, and playing sometimes unfriendly hide-and-seek with dogs in a local park. Photo: Amir Cohen/Reuters.