Foxes
There are few things more alarming than walking upstairs to bed to discover a fully grown fox asleep on the final flight. More alarming is the realisation that the animal is snoozing within three feet of your five year old – mercifully also in the land of Nod. Mark (a farmer’s son) had initially mistaken it for a stray cat and had come back down to tell me as much. I (who has never lived anywhere without street lights) was able to point out his error – as any married woman will tell you, it is a surprisingly satisfying feeling.
Having established the animal’s genesis, we were then left with the issue of how to dispatch it with the minimum of fuss. Mark’s choice of cricket bat seemed uninspired, brutal even, so I chose Elnett. Maximum Hold hairspray might appear an odd choice but I was working on the basis that the ‘pssh pssh’ noise, if not the heady scent, would encourage it to leave. I wasn’t planning to get close enough to backcomb its fur – although it was quite luxurious. In the end, the blunt end of an old walking stick was used to prod it out of the door.
Duffle, our border terrier, was lounging comfortably on the floor below. I would like to say that he had a cold, that his sense of smell was impaired. That his warrior instinct to protect the hearth from predators had been compromised by a diet of dried food. But the reality is that he is far too used to seeing foxes to even consider them as anything but the norm. There are now more than 33,000 foxes living in urban areas and most of them (including our guest) feel quite at home.
Local authorities have given up trying to control them; working on the basis that if you increase the mortality rate, the foxes compensate by increasing the number of vixens that breed. Their casualness around humans is understandable, not least as many people feed them, encouraging them to the point where they virtually have their own place setting at the dining-room table.
The problems arise with owners of smaller pets. Rabbits in outside hutches present as a tasty alternative to old scraps and even the average-sized cat might have to be a brute to withstand a spirited fight. Still, such attacks are rare. Our own nocturnal visitor was back the next morning, sunning himself in the garden, Duffle casually looking the other way.
Next week: Taxing times
Having established the animal’s genesis, we were then left with the issue of how to dispatch it with the minimum of fuss. Mark’s choice of cricket bat seemed uninspired, brutal even, so I chose Elnett. Maximum Hold hairspray might appear an odd choice but I was working on the basis that the ‘pssh pssh’ noise, if not the heady scent, would encourage it to leave. I wasn’t planning to get close enough to backcomb its fur – although it was quite luxurious. In the end, the blunt end of an old walking stick was used to prod it out of the door.
Duffle, our border terrier, was lounging comfortably on the floor below. I would like to say that he had a cold, that his sense of smell was impaired. That his warrior instinct to protect the hearth from predators had been compromised by a diet of dried food. But the reality is that he is far too used to seeing foxes to even consider them as anything but the norm. There are now more than 33,000 foxes living in urban areas and most of them (including our guest) feel quite at home.
Local authorities have given up trying to control them; working on the basis that if you increase the mortality rate, the foxes compensate by increasing the number of vixens that breed. Their casualness around humans is understandable, not least as many people feed them, encouraging them to the point where they virtually have their own place setting at the dining-room table.
The problems arise with owners of smaller pets. Rabbits in outside hutches present as a tasty alternative to old scraps and even the average-sized cat might have to be a brute to withstand a spirited fight. Still, such attacks are rare. Our own nocturnal visitor was back the next morning, sunning himself in the garden, Duffle casually looking the other way.
Next week: Taxing times