Some fishermen from Labrador, Newfoundland, had recently set sail to go crab catching. When they got further out to sea, what they saw wasn’t what they had originally set out for. They saw a small, dark shape on top of an iceberg but couldn’t imagine what it was.

Alan Russell and his crew were roughly four miles away from the shore when they spotted a furry, wet critter perched atop a makeshift raft. When they got closer they discovered that it was a an Arctic fox that was shivering from the old.

The fishermen attempted to pick up the fox from the ice, but the little fox was too skittish to let them get close enough. The team finally resorted to breaking the ice with their boat and fishing the fox out of the water with a net.

Once aboard the ship, the fox refused to eat anything they offered. When the crew stopped to get supplies at a nearby harbor, they bought a package of saw dust to attempt to dry the fox off. They also finally found a treat that their new little friend liked – Vienna sausages.

“He wasn’t aggressive at all,” said Russell. He says that little by little the fox began coming around. He began to like the crew because they kept feeding him sausages, kept him warm, and helped nurse him back to health.

The crew guessed that the fox had been hunting for food on the ice pan when it broke off from the mainland and floated out to sea. They guess that he probably only had another day or two out on the ice before he would have perished from the cold and starvation.

Sounds like one lucky little fox to me! Be sure to share this heartwarming rescue story with your family and friends.