The fox hops about happily to see the children following it to the food place.  It hops up onto one of those campsite trashcan thingies that is firmly in place with bolts impeded into a concrete pad then pokes its head inside, tail swishing.  It then looks over at the kids with an empty sandwich bag in its mouth, whimpering sadly.

Eli meeps. "It is hungry... and it's asking us to feed it. Let's get it something."

He rushes inside the mess hall to look for some sandwich fixings. Namely any meat.

  Joe figures it would need to have a purple dress to prefer a BLT over just throwing one of those ingredients at it.

  Still, this is highly preferable to his initial worries.  "You are lucky Eli is so nice."

Happy fox is happily dancing about, panting excitedly.  It occasionally stops to look around and sniff, then resumes tail-wagging and pacing.

Fixings aren't easy to get at, even for human children.  But Eli is clever and can figure out how to get at the stuff that the grown-ups didn't bother locking up because kids are too short to reach.

Once Eli has enough to feed Joe, himself and the fox, he heads back out and sits on his feet, holding up the yummy meat while nomming some himself. "Brought enough for all three of us, Joe."

  Yes, definitely much better than expected.  See, Joe could go for being wrong more often when it's like this.

  "Thanks, Eli."

The fox gladly noms the offered snack then tries to thank Eli with a cheek-lick.

Eli giggles from the licks and pets the fox in return. "Do foxes swim? I'm still a little wet from earlier and was looking to swim, but if foxes don't swim, I'll need to get changed back into my uniform or something."

  "I have no idea, though they probably prefer not to get dunked if they can help it."

The fox is so happy being pet, it tries to climb onto Eli's lap.  It looks over to Joe inquisitively and motions with its paw in an almost obvious, "Aren't you going to pet me too?" gesture.

Eli giggles and cuddles the fox, enjoying the body heat. "This fox sure knows charades."

  "I think for the moment I'll stick to compliments, like how cool the fox looks.  Besides, it would feel a bit crowded leaning over them while you are trying to hug as much of them as possible."

The fox gets that contented, eyes-closed look animals get when cuddled by a boy they love.  The tail wags against Eli's face.

An adult approaches from the direction of the pond, watching the kids in surprise.

Far be it from Eli to accuse another boy of being shy. He simply nods in acknowledgement to Joe.

As the adult approaches, Eli smiles and says, "Hello Mr Haverson. This fox sure is friendly."

  "I spent a good five minutes of paranoid lecturing before it turned out the fox wasn't a jerk."

Mr Haverson chuckles.  "Depends on how you define jerk.  That fox is a cunning little con artist that charms campers into feeding him.  But I've never seen him get so cuddly...""

Eli says, "Oh? Well... I did feed him and he licked me and curled up on my lap."

  "Honestly, 'will be cute for sandwhich' despite being such a low bar, seems surprisingly hard for some people to pass on the Jerk, Yes/No? front."

The camp counselor shrugs from Eli's comment.  "Maybe you just have an honest face the fox trusts?"

He chuckles from Joe's comment.  "Sad but true.  Either way, I figure if you two are keeping an eye on him, he'll be staying out of mischief.  If he starts digging in the trash just holler.

"Be careful with the other kids, though.  Some will throw rocks at him, and if that happens he'll bolt and stay away for quite a while."

Eli says, "Wh-...why would anyone throw rocks at him?"

  "Because sometimes, boredom leads to cruelty.  Just look at the basis of every road trip movie."

The grownup shrugs.  "I dunno.  Same reason they throw rocks at people, I guess.  Only small woodland creatures tend not to have parents who can find out where they live."

The fox was a little nervous about the adult at first, but since the conversation hasn't gotten angry sounding, he just enjoys the pets, occasionally licking Eli.

Eli looks at Joe a little confused, unsure what he means.

Eli says, "Do you know much about foxes, Mr Haverson?"

  "I'm sure some of them would be dumb enough to throw rocks at medium to large creatures too, unfortunately."

The man rubs behind his head sheepishly.  "Very little, to be honest.  I know some interesting fox facts, though.  There's 48 sub-species of fox, they have whiskers on their legs as well as around their faces, heir eyes glow green when light is shone into them at night, they cannot chew their food like humans can, they have to tear it up into small pieces, and so on."

He nods to Joe.  "If you see something like that, yell for an adult."