Our city got 5" of snow and another 1" of crusty ice blanketing the top of it in the February Texas Icy Snowpocalypse. Many of our yard plants died back if not totally died off. Our aspidistra clumps at the base of our large trees were no exception. All leaves died off. We cut all five clumps back to the tree trunks they surrounded, to a level of 5". No new shoots as yet, though I'm getting a few new shoots on the strip of aspitistra in my back yard.
When we cut the dead leaves back with our hedge trimmers, we discovered two huge burrows in the ground, both about 1½- 2' deep and 10-12" wide. Our city dropped as low as 2ºF and hovered around that temperature for 2 or 3 more nights. I worried for all the stray cats and dogs wandering in that storm.
During that 5-6 day stretch of frigid weather, I happend to see a red fox outlined against the white snow (we have a 3-globe lamp post out front). He sauntered jauntily down my front side walkway on the coldest 3 nights. He would pass right under the window in front of my TV-viewing chair, so I couldn's help notice him. He would cross our driveway and enter the next yard, re-entering the same way he left about 30 minutes later. He was probably hunting down some dinner. It was just too cold to go out and see where he went, to be quite honest.
We jointly concluded our little fox visitor must have dug the holes to survive the frigid weather! My husband felt compelled to fill them in the next day with gravel and dirt (since the cold had moved on), pointing out my not twisting my ankle in one of them was more important than the fox having to dig a new home somewhere else. I've broken both wrists falling in this yard, tripping over remnant stumps of small bush removals by the previous owner. LOL
We spot foxes occasionally down at our rural country cabin property an hour away, but have only seen one grey fox, on two different occasions, here in the city over the 20 years we/ve lived in Temple. We were gob-smacked just to have spotted a red fox 3 nights in a row, but to discover he was likely "camping out" right out front all week long...........well that's pretty special. He only came out at dusk or after dark (he stood out very visibly against our 5" snow and ice bla nketing the sidewalk, plus there is a 3-globe lamp post right in front of that window. It was too cold to wait him out with camera on the porch, so sorry I don't have a photo of the cute little guy to share. We consider ourselves fortunate to have seen him.
