New animal sculptures in Tacony Creek Park are designed for kids, but adults are loving them too

There’s a new fox sculpture in Tacony Creek Park, and it reminds Dalila Bedoya a whole lot of the live foxes she’s seen outside her house in the Juniata Park neighborhood.

“They were able to get the personality of a real fox,” said Bedoya, who’s lived near the park for 23 years and sits on the board of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership. “I get to see them in front of my house, playing, grabbing things … stealing shoes and balls.”

The fox sculpture isn’t the only recently installed figure of an animal familiar to the Tacony Creek watershed: you can find a fish, a turtle, a watersnake, a heron, and a river otter distributed amongst the grass nearby Cayuga Street, too.

The sculptures are colorful, with crevices designed to pour water into to watch it flow to their mosaic-tiled bases.

It’s all part of the park’s new “River Alive! Learning Trail,” based on Independence Seaport Museum’s interactive “River Alive” exhibit. The project brings animal sculptures, new seating, crosswalk murals, and a dose of watershed education to a grassy area around Ferko Playground.

“When I see something like this here, I’m so proud,” said Heriberto Reyes, a community member who comes to the park pretty much every day and participated in the artwork’s installation. “I’ve never seen something like this before.”