Beware of ‘Swiper,’ a Fox at Grand Teton Park With a Penchant for Footwear

U.S.|Beware of ‘Swiper,’ a Fox at Grand Teton Park With a Penchant for Footwear

Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, known for its majestic mountain vistas and rich flora and fauna, has recently added another distinction of sorts: A wily fox there has been surreptitiously relieving campers of their shoes.

“Wanted for grand theft footwear,” the National Park Service announced with a poster featuring an illustration of a fox gripping a sneaker in its teeth. “Crimes: Stealing left shoes (they taste better), flip-flops and campers’ pride.”

The whimsical wanted poster, which branded the fox the Sneaker Snatcher, the Midnight Mismatcher and Swiper the Fox, was part of the park’s initial effort to warn campers that parkgoers’ shoes had been vanishing.

An accompanying poster stapled to a pole near the Lizard Creek Campground tallied 19 stolen pieces of footwear and suggested that the culprit was still on the prowl: “0 days since last fox/shoe incident.”

But last week, as the tally of purloined footwear rose to 32, Grand Teton posted a video to Instagram scolding campers for intentionally leaving out their footwear as offerings for the thieving fox — “just in case he visits.”

In the video — set to audio of a scene from the 2008 animated movie “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” — a would-be camper leaves a pair of hiking boots outside a tent and the Sneaker Snatcher, played by a stuffed and mounted fox, thanks them for the sacrifice.