I don’t think there have been any questions in Parliament this year on urban foxes, probably because there have been no recent reports of fox attacks on children. But there are as many foxes about as ever, and the recent hot weather has encouraged them to party through the night in our gardens. I live in south London and have two ‘earthworks’ in my garden – one probably leading to a den – under my boundary fences dug out by foxes. They are messy in every possible way, and incredibly noisy, particularly during the night when the bloodcurdling screams of the vixen tend to permeate the deepest sleep. They love digging holes in the garden just for the hell of it, and my neighbour – who saw five fox cubs in the road a month or two ago – tells me that they are now digging up her friend’s vegetable patch.
The Government say it is up to local authorities to take action if they want to, but, quite understandably, they won’t do so as foxes are not classed as pests. Lots of Londoners – Joanna Lumley, for example – love foxes and feed them regularly, although Lambeth Council specifically asks residents not to do this. It is well known that trapping foxes and transporting them to the countryside is cruel, and how does anyone know that food laced with contraceptives will be eaten by foxes? I myself have an ambivalent attitude to foxes – and have found myself shutting a window quietly so as not to disturb a slumbering fox, exhausted after a heavy night probably messing up my garden. They are truly like rebellious teenagers, cocking a snook at everyone.
The problem lies with ignorance. People who live in towns and cities have no idea of animal life and certainly not what a fox is capable of.
A few films on fox life in schools should show these pretty creatures are deadly. And a fox doesn’t distinguish between tearing out the throat of your duckling or chic to the throat of your child or you.
That said, I do understand how easy it is to regard them as tame. My friend lives in Chiswick by the river. And there is a fox who lives close by, he is cocky and cute and lives akin to a human lifestyle. As he confidently walks past in the morning air, he nods good morning and saunters off as calm as would a labrador. He’s pretty and you can imagine him in a Disney cartoon strutting his stuff for the vixen.
What can any government do? If people simply do not believe these animals are predatory and will eat you alive, then, there is little answer. Other than a culling with guns rather than dogs.
@maude elwes You sum up the problem perfectly: foxes can be merciless killers but most of the time look cute and harmless. @Lord Blagger – I wonder if having a dead fox in the garden would put other foxes off. Would they ignore it?Trap them and then farm and breed them
(1) as pet-food;
(2) for budget-priced church-going fox-furs for ladies of the ‘lower-middle- and upper-working- classes’ for instance.
——–
Incidentally
perhaps the “rebellious British teenagers” appear to the clever foxes to be justifiably emulable,
such teenagers having been educated by the best-known Citizenship Educators of Britain(such as Hansard’s ‘on-loan-to-the-Lords-of-the-Blog’, ‘Beccy Allen’ ?)
“Cocking a snook” ?
Possibly they (the foxes) are simply reminding you (et al) that The Earth was created for Every Lifeform Equally;
“Foxes-of-the-World Unite !
Onwards, as to War !”
would be an eminent Pro-testation slogan, in favour of
“fair digs and training-gymnasiums for All” surely ?
And perhaps
the real reason why that window is being closed so very quietly
is to avoid being complained-against by the “human” neighbours,
rather than so as not to re-awaken the vixen and thus cause her to resume pro-testing in favour of “egalitarian exercise for all” ?
I live in the centre of London and are plagued by them.
So I shot one. Now you’ve got to dispose of the body, so I rang up the local council’s environmental waste department.
I wanted to know how to dispose of one.
Now people don’t eat foxes, so it can’t be food waste, or could it? Animals eat dead foxes and pet foot waste is clearly food waste.
It could be classed as clothing and go in the plastic bag for clothing, because people wear fox furs.
It was plugged in the garden, so its a could be classed as garden waste and go in the bin for the garden waste.
Now since its full of lead, and leads a poison, it could be classed as hazardous waste and need a special collection.
Since it was also covered in mange, that also means its likely to be a biohazard, and need the full monte with suits, special disposal etc.
Maybe they even do a special dead animal collection service.
Or does one just dump in the standard bin, and wait two weeks whilst it festers in the summer.
Or I could just drop it off at the local MacDonnalds.
Ah, the joys of regulations …
Blagger should know how important a decent burial service is to foxes. Also he should erect a cross with the words
“In Memory of Mr Fox, the Wild Urban Dog 2012”
a brass plaque.
A pauper’s funeral. I’ll as environmental health if they provide these.
Baroness Thomas,
I believe one reason traditional fox hunting was outlawed was the cruelty to horses. Perhaps tourist revenues and other benefites could come from developing an urban fox hunt with motorcycles and motorized skateboards. The kits orphaned could be reared for release in the country safely, neighbours could come to know each other and the participants would get all sorts of physical exercise.
Britain has led in the creation of golf and modern football. It is time for a new contribution to the invention of sport perhaps….
Perhaps you, and Joanna Lumley, should count yourselves lucky. Rural foxes make themselves very scarce indeed. I’ve only seen a couple in as many years, and as for the pleasure of a family of young, that would never be, since the hounds would be out “cubbing” with a vengeance as soon as the harvest is over, at the crack of dawn.
Foxes probably have a finer art of making themselves scarce than even the deer, who are very timid creatures indeed, as far from
human noise as possible. Deer get caught by the traffic in a way that foxes don’t seem to, possibly beause the deer have to concentrate on foraging, whereas dogs like meat.
What would be surprising if your pet labrador bitch were out in the garden one night and you ended up with a Foxador…
You’ll have to ask Joanna to get them up to it!
Just for the record, foxes rarely dig holes “just for the hell of it”. Lawns and flower beds are good sources of earthworms and grubs, a vital food source for a fox.
A good tip for keeping foxes out of your garden is to locate their point of entry and utilise a scent-based Fox Repellent at that area to make the fox think a more powerful predator has claimed the territory.
Remember though that it takes patience to deter foxes as their behaviour cannot be changed overnight.
Thanks for that, John. Do foxes eat slugs and snails? If so, they’ll be having a few midnight feasts.
One man locally had a terrier, and a dislike for me, I never discovered why, so he brought the dog up to my garden every two or three nights and let him in to do his worst.
He never came in himself until the terrier got STUCK down a hole, which had a post in it ,until a few days before, and started yelping like hell while I was dozing in bed and the man was waiting for the return of his
dog, after doing its worst.
I heard the kerfuffle and I realized that I had at last caught the pepetrator of this heinous crime, and shouted
” Don’t you come in to my garden you wicked trespasser!”
I assumed that he took his religion seriously because this is a CofE parish and not a town ward, but he would hear none of it ,while the dog was still stuck down the hole, and shouted,
“I’m coming in! I’m coming in!”
to which I replied….(Fill in this space with expletives)
But he still came in and I had solved the problem of which wicked wild animal had been
doing serious damage to my garden for a couple of years… could it have been a deer or a badger or a ….. FOX!?
A few months later the terrier digging in the garden started again, so I secretively followed the man, when I saw him with his dog, and since I had some spare flints from the garden, I left him to improve his front drive,with a supermarket bagful, every time I found the…..”FOX” digging in my garden.
PROBLEM SOLVED; It has never happened since after three or four years.
The noble baroness may have somebody locally, who thinks he/she knows something about political parties and… hers, and consequently do the dirty with their terrier, every few days.
Can you imagine what it is like to be a former PM? Security has to be stricter still than hanging out waiting for a miscreant owner and his pooch.