A Second Family Roused From Den : Wildlife: Gray foxes--a mother and two pups--are trapped and removed. This time home was a shallow burrow under a deck in a Corona del Mar back yard.

CORONA DEL MAR —  Officials have once again trapped and removed a family of foxes--this time from a shallow den under a wood deck in a back yard.

The gray fox family of one mother and two pups, captured in coyote traps baited with chicken, was relocated Sunday to undeveloped hillside between Irvine and Laguna Canyon, said Bill Lyons, senior animal control officer for the city of Newport Beach.

The animals had apparently been driven from their natural habitat by bulldozers working between Coast Highway and San Joaquin Hills Road, just a block from the home of Scott and Cindy McAfee.

The couple first spotted the foxes in their yard last Monday upon returning from a weeklong vacation.

Mistakenly believing the salt-and-pepper, bushy-tailed animals to be coyotes that might threaten her 2-year-old child, Cindy McAfee called animal control officers.

But after observing the nocturnal animals, she said she came to adore them. “They were bright, alert and very family-oriented.”

She watched the mother circle the yard, then whimper to her pups to come out from their burrows under the deck. She guarded them at a constant distance as they romped across the yard. She brought them possums to eat.

The three foxes were captured over a two-day period and released together. Officials set a trap for a fourth fox McAfee had seen dropping off food late at night for the pups. If found, the fox will be released in the same area.

The operation was easier and less costly than the recent capture of red foxes near the Costa Mesa Freeway because the animals were not deeply entrenched in the ground and are indigenous to the area, thus enabling officials to release them nearby, Lyons said.