Urban foxes

Some people feed them! (foxes) son -in-law had to have a quiet word with neighbour.

We live on the edge of a "green lung"" and have squirrels foxes badgers and rabbits,but here they seem to keep each other in check. We also have on and off deer and pheasants . Some seasons we are over run with rabbits then the fox get plump and glossy but hardly a rabbit last year and the fox looking lean and hungry. There is also a semi resident sparrow hawk . Perhaps introducing a few predators might be the answer in London .open the zoo at night.?

We get badgers too. They're making quite a mess of the garden.

I have the hawks also buzzards and jays, deer are common but haven't seen any rabbits. Did have squirrels until him next door shot them all.

I like it Stansgran - you often have a wonderfully surreal "take" on threads!
Your suggestion might also solve the problem of some of the lowlifes that blight our streets and street corners at night who make it hard for people to go home without being molested/mugged or worse!

It's polar bears that would worry me. Or even grizzlies.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/07/stop-hounding-britain-urban-foxes

An old article, but an interesting one. There is a lot of hype about urban foxes.

I feed them in winter and will continue to do so.

Would you leave the darling GC out in its pram nowadays in London? My SIL got very wobbly when I put their infants under the lilac tree to nap(daytime only) in my sight and hearing in the NE

Oh but the smell of foxes! Eeuuurrgh!

No! Babies in prams under apple trees are a thing of the past now.

#memories

People in urban areas think foxes (especially cubs) are very cute and deliberately feed them. They feed grey squirrels as well. They don't deliberately feed rats but that's one result of putting food out. I'm with gracesmum. I like the idea of the urban hunt.

What or who is the Linda Snell brigade?

I don't feed foxes because I think they're cute I feed them because I know they have a hard time surviving. There seems to be evidence that in many areas their numbers are actually declining. They certainly don't live very long.

I'm confused, nightowl. Foxes are a pest. Why stop them from dying young? Or packing up and moving out?

I don't see them as a pest Lilygran. I don't even know what a pest is. I can accept that some life forms might be seen as pests if they threaten your food source. To me foxes are just another form of animal life that has every right to live. I'll even help them if I can.

Absent it's on the Archers. She's trying to protect badgers in a dairy farming area.

I think a number of forms of life, not threatening my food source, are a real threat to me in other ways. Mosquitoes? Streptococcus?

Of course Lilygran. I posted in a hurry, should be dong other things. I just don't think a lot of creatures that we refer to as pests come into that category. We'll have to agree to differ on this one. My views on animals were there from early childhood, I'm not going to change them now

Accepted, nightowl

When my daughter lived in London she lived in a second floor walk-up ex-council property with open walkways. A fox regularly made it up the stairs to sh*t in the planter by her front door. She knows it was a fox because on several evenings when she was walking along the walkway to her front door the fox rushed past her going in the opposite direction.

My husband has several friends who are pest controllers and they are shooting a lot of foxes. Of course it is like painting the Forth Bridge - clear out one lot of foxes and the vacancy will soon be filled by another family. I know we have foxes round here because I see them if I'm out late in the evening and, of course, we hear the vixens screaming. They've never been any trouble though, not even a dustbin knocked over. We all feed the squirrels and I always feel guilty when my cats kill one. A friend of mine thought her very elderly cat had been killed by a fox but came to the conclusion that it had bumped into a fox in the garden and died from shock.

Apparently last year there were over 5,000 hospital admissions for dog bites, with young children suffering disproportionately. Organisations such as the RSPCA and Dogs Trust are alarmed by the year on year increase in injuries caused by dogs. Of course, it's very sad what has happened to this young baby but most of us are far more at risk from our canine best friend than from an urban fox.

Personally, I value the urban foxes that visit my garden. I do agree with previous posters that the responsible disposal of waste would eliminate many unwanted pests.

Squirrels – rats with bushy tails. Oo-ar, they gives me an itchy trigger finger, the little varmints. I was always rather pleased when my cat killed them – well, not if I trod on one at the bottom of the stairs with a bare foot in the middle of the night.

absent, you must have had some athletic cats if they could catch squirrels. I encouraged mine but it was no good. They just sat under the hazel tree and gawped while the squirrels busied themselves harvesting the nuts!