Nashville is a town built on three chords and the truth. For decades, Jerry Vandiver traded in the former, writing songs for the likes of Tim McGraw while navigating the machinery of the modern music business. But at seventy-eight years old, his daily grind looks vastly different from the smoky rooms of Music Row. He spends his mornings tracking wildlife through suburban brushlines, carrying medicated bait and treatment kits designed to save animals suffering from a brutal, creeping parasite.
Sarcoptic mange is an agonizing affliction. Caused by microscopic mites that burrow beneath the skin, it strips an animal of its fur, leaving behind a crusty, cracked epidermis that cracks open to the elements. Without human intervention, infected red foxes face a grim trajectory. Hypothermia, secondary infections, and complete exhaustion usually finish the job within weeks. Meanwhile, you can find similar stories here: Inside the Weaponized Silence of Wartime Sexual Violence.
Vandiver stepped into this silent crisis out of necessity. When a bedraggled fox showed up near his property looking like a walking skeleton, local animal control offered standard boilerplate advice: let nature take its course. That response did not sit well with a man who spent his life observing the raw mechanics of survival. He started researching wildlife medicine, consulting with rehabilitators, and figuring out how to deliver precise doses of ivermectin or similar antiparasitic treatments safely via food.
The operation expanded from a single backyard observation to a systematic rescue network spanning multiple neighborhoods. By the end of this year, Vandiver had treated more than sixty foxes. Each case requires patience, acute observation, and an understanding of animal behavior that cannot be taught in a classroom. You cannot simply hand-deliver medicine to a wild carnivore. You have to earn trust, track feeding patterns, and ensure that the right animal gets the right dose without attracting domestic pets or other wildlife. To explore the full picture, we recommend the excellent article by Al Jazeera.
Urban wildlife management in cities like Nashville is chronically underfunded. Municipal agencies deal primarily with immediate public safety threats, rabid animals, or structural pests. Suburban expansion continually pushes coyotes, foxes, and raccoons into tighter quarters with humans, increasing the frequency of mange outbreaks driven by overcrowding and shared food sources. When natural habitats fragment, parasites jump more easily between populations. Private citizens like Vandiver fill the massive gap left by state budgets, acting as frontline medics for creatures that lack any institutional voice.
Treating mange successfully demands more than throwing scraps into the yard. Parasitic mites reproduce rapidly, and partial treatments only breed resistance or prolong suffering. Vandiver keeps meticulous logs of sightings, individual markings, and treatment schedules. A fox that starts out hairless, shivering, and blind from crusted eyelids transforms over several weeks into an animal with a thick, russet coat bounding back toward the tree line.
Critics of wildlife intervention often argue that humans should step back and let ecological selection run its course. Yet mange in urban environments is largely exacerbated by human presence, from artificial food waste to dense housing developments that restrict natural migration corridors. When human intervention creates the pressure cooker, targeted medical help acts as a small correction to an artificial imbalance.
The work is dirty, unglamorous, and often heartbreaking. Not every animal makes it. Some are discovered too late, their bodies already too compromised by organ failure and systemic infection for medicine to reverse the damage. Vandiver handles the losses with the quiet pragmatism of someone who has seen enough of life's rough edges to know that control is an illusion.
Age brings a specific brand of clarity. While many people at seventy-eight are winding down, Vandiver is setting out before dawn with a cooler of medicated meatballs and a pair of binoculars. The music business taught him how to tell a story in three minutes, but out here in the wet grass of a Tennessee morning, the narrative writes itself one recovered animal at a time.
