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\u2013 credit, Jerry Vandiver, retrieved from Facebook<\/p>\n \u2013 credit, Jerry Vandiver, retrieved from Facebook<\/p>\n
A Nashville singer-songwriter has become a star\u2014but not because of his guitar playing.<\/p>\n
Jerry Vandiver, whose songs have been recorded by country stars like Tim McGraw, moonlights as a volunteer hero to the local red fox population.<\/p>\n
As Tennessee suffers from a serious mange epidemic, particularly bad in the area around Vandiver\u2019s adopted home of Nashville, Vandiver has logged thousands of volunteer hours over the last 7 years baiting and trapping foxes before taking them into an animal rescue center.<\/p>\n
Mange is not rabies; it doesn\u2019t have to be fatal. Caused by skin mites and manifesting as persistent skin irritation and pain leading to hair loss, rashes, and scabs, it can kill foxes due to secondary infections and is highly contagious through physical contact.<\/p>\n
Yet treatment for mange is rather straightforward. The problem is that usually, there isn\u2019t a 78-year-old trapper with a heart of gold in the area who\u2019s willing to wake up at any hour of the night to retrieve a fox trap from the woods and drive it half an hour to Walden\u2019s Puddle Animal Rescue<\/a>.<\/p>\n Coming to GNN via the Tennessean<\/a>, Vandiver\u2019s story is an inspiring reminder that beauty is more than just skin deep.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not the hero, I\u2019m just the ambulance driver,\u201d Vandiver told the paper.<\/a> \u201cMange is treatable. If\u00a0we can catch them, they can have a healthy, happy life. I know how to do that. I can\u2019t walk away from them when I see those pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n The pictures he\u2019s referring to are the dozens he receives every month from concerned citizens of the Nashville suburbs who know that he\u2019s the man to call if there\u2019s a mangey fox in the area. But he wasn\u2019t always the red fox first responder.<\/p>\n Moving to Nashville from his home state of Missouri, Jerry Vandiver built a career<\/a> in the 1980s as a singer songwriter, with his tunes being recorded by the likes of Phil Vassar and Barbara Mandrell. He\u2019s a Nashville country-scene staple, yet it was when he began to use his performing artist Facebook page<\/a> as a place to post before-and-after videos of the foxes he would rescue that his star really began to shine.<\/p>\n The Tennessean reports that this change of tune saw his follower count grow from 325 to 5,000. Part of that is a sad story\u2014the increasing number of foxes with mange\u2014and so the increasing amount of content Vandiver was posting about it. In August, he logged 234 volunteer hours catching and driving foxes around. In the whole of 2025, Walden\u2019s Puddle rehabilitated 44 red foxes. By September, they\u2019ve already passed 60.<\/p>\n