Forum Topic

Foxes

Suddenly we seem to have had a few visits from large foxes, who sit in our garden staring at us. Anyone else noticed more foxes in their back garden. In 28 yrs we have never had a fox in our garden. Surely there is not a food shortage for them!

Perrin Anson ● 4304d53 Comments

Give us a break.You must be a riot during conversation down the pub.

Tony Colliver ● 4297d

For those who are interested, the quote came from Wikipedia. There's no excuse for not mentioning a source.

Albertina McNeill ● 4297d

I googled Grundy because though I lived in the countryside for my first 18 years I am rarely Archers listener. I indicated I was quoting, not 'ripped off and republished', but did not give the source as I was posting on this forum not writing a book or academic paper. My views on foxes have changed over time, especially hunting.

Graham Weeks ● 4298d

Judging by the way you've ripped off and republished someone else's words you don't credit your sources, whatever else you usually do. Country born and bred but you still had to Google "Joe Grundy"? Tragic. And I thought, like Joe, that you considered yourself to be a reliable source of country lore and wisdom. You are, after all, the one who brought the word "countryside" into this.

Albertina McNeill ● 4298d

;Ealing's answer to Joe Grundy agrees that fox hunting is an ineffective form of control. And gone along with legalised cock/dog fighting, badger/bear baiting and the dinosaurs that engaged in them.''Joe Grundy (Edward Kelsey, formerly played by Reg Johnstone and Haydn Jones) is the oldest of this well-established local family and often provides comic relief. Joe maintained for many years that the Archer dynasty had robbed them of their estate. After years attempting to keep the family farm afloat, they were made bankrupt in 2000 - an opportunity for the mainly urban audience to witness the personal and family tragedy of farm sales - and were forced to move to a sink estate in Borchester. Joe took this especially hard and in one of the most harrowing episodes ever broadcast, bludgeoned his beloved ferrets to death with a hammer. The family moved back to Ambridge shortly thereafter. Lately he has begun to assist Oliver Sterling in the management of a new dairy herd at Grange Farm and has celebrated his ninetieth birthday.'Well I am happy with the comic relief bit but the rest has no parallels. I do though usually show thankfulness when I find agreement with someone else.

Graham Weeks ● 4298d

He has cows and a tractor.  I guess that would be typical Farmer traits.

Debbie Edwards ● 4298d

Yes, but he is not your typical farmer is he!

Tony Colliver ● 4298d

Better than beds in sheds.

Keith Iddon ● 4298d

Ealing's answer to Joe Grundy agrees that fox hunting is an ineffective form of control. And gone along with legalised cock/dog fighting, badger/bear baiting and the dinosaurs that engaged in them. It's called progress and anyone who believes that a rural community should be reliant on that kind of activity alone belongs in the cast of "Downton Abbey".

Albertina McNeill ● 4299d

Yes. 'You'd have to be very naive to think that hunting with dogs and horses has much to do with keeping foxes under control - it's a social occasion.' Well it was, and a tradition now lost. We agree on that.

Graham Weeks ● 4299d

"Countryfile" and "The Archers" have a lot to answer for. "Farming Today" is the programme of choice because it's on while you're milking and gives you advice about stuff like crop spraying which is probably why I don't remember seeing anyone pull up random pieces of grass and put them into their mouths. The local pub was for people who had moved there from town, the retired or those who could afford it.  Losing your licence would make life impossible. Most deaths of farmers that we were aware of at that time were as a result of suicide (feel free to make a crass comment). The hunt usually offers to compensate for damage but they can't turn back the clock if a window of good weather is missed for harvesting or other work that relies on it and neither can expensive lawyers. You'd have to be very naive to think that hunting with dogs and horses has much to do with keeping foxes under control - it's a social occasion.

Albertina McNeill ● 4299d

Cheap storage or henhouses.

Graham Weeks ● 4299d

No need, I don't have problems with badgers or foxes.As you seem to be so wise about rural life, what about the railway carriages in fields, miles from any track?

Debbie Edwards ● 4299d

Have you ever considered taking a course in lateral thinking Debbie?

Keith Iddon ● 4299d

I thought it was because they spread Bovine TB?

Debbie Edwards ● 4299d

They kill badgers and foxes partly to keep the price of food down so that townies who evidently haven't a clue about farming and animal husbandry can chatter at each other over an inexpensive cut of meat at dinner about how cuddly foxes and badgers are...

Keith Iddon ● 4299d

Don't they kill badgers?

Debbie Edwards ● 4299d

That bloke off countryfile seems to have enough time to make TV shows and drive around in a little buggy delivering hay.

Debbie Edwards ● 4299d

When they are not ploughing fields they are sleeping after working incredibly long hard hours.They only shoot dogs that actively worry sheep.

Tony Colliver ● 4299d

"Why didn't the farmer issue legal proceedings after his field was trampled?"The real politic of country life does not allow such upstart behaviour.To trangress against the powerful interest that is the hunt is simply not worth the resultant lifelong fallout.

Tony Colliver ● 4299d

"...sail the river..."That was presumably before it turned into the open sewer with the regular raw sewage and dumped oil that it teems with these days...

Tony Colliver ● 4299d

Why then are you not allowed to kill them?(Because apparently you are not without employing a professional marksman - something about "causing unnecessary suffering to a British mammal".  Not that I want to see them killed. As I say, I am rather fond of them.  Mind you, people get equally sentimental about bumping off grey squirrels, and they definitely are vermin.)

Tony Colliver ● 4299d

Something I have often wondered about farmers is why do they put railway carriages in fields?Farmers just shoot things that don't belong to them, dogs, foxes and say it was worrying the sheep.I have always been under the impression that the hunt stuff is more about a rural country life, like maypole dancing, than fox control.  As has been pointed out, milking cows at 4 in the morning isn't fun so the rural folk need something to do when they aren't ploughing fields.

Debbie Edwards ● 4299d

Quite. But the hunters want to enjoy their sport and the anti-hunting lobby wants to  deny them their pleasure. However both sides present their cases in other terms.

Graham Weeks ● 4299d

Why then do you see them chewing bits of straw leaning on a gate or being run over in the early hours after a lock in? Why didn't the farmer issue legal proceedings after his field was trampled?Whenever foxes are discussed, it always seems to come back to hunting as in a traditional fox hunt with dogs and horses.  There are other ways to cull foxes, which are vermin.

Debbie Edwards ● 4299d

Thanks Albertina - I understand and agree with what you say about country life not being as good as my rather poetic and inappropriate word 'bucolic'. I married a country girl from Lancashire whose family owned a ffarm all their lives, so I appreciate the sheer drudgery and hard work of farming.

Gerry Tan ● 4299d

I've never liked the term "townie", or anything else that suggests or reinforces a rift between those who live in and outside cities. We have more in common than most realise, a need for affordable housing, jobs, better public transport and broadband access. Poverty exists outside as well as in cities. From personal experience I can assure you that the word "bucolic" plays no part in the real life of most farmers and rural workers. Getting up every day of the week to round up cows in the dark at 4am for milking is hard enough when you're well but if you're not and there's no one else to do it - tough. I should point out that in my case the walk to the milking parlour was a mile each way and we had to steer them away from the bank manager's roses (there was a real sense of fear that he might not extend loans). When it came to foxes the problem was the blokes in pink jackets who rode to hounds. I've seen the damage caused by them in a space of a few seconds to a field that my then partner had spent hours preparing for sowing, mind numbing hours spent going round and round that damned field in a tractor. The townie/countryman argument falls apart when you know that many of those "hunters" were town dwellers who could afford to keep horses and the farmer was a member of the League Against Cruel Sports.

Albertina McNeill ● 4300d

Raised in concrete blocks?! Some are growing up in houses worth half a million and more in the posher parts of Ealing.

Albertina McNeill ● 4300d

I love city life. But I worry about the kids too many things seem gang related because they are raised in concrete blocks with no other social outlets and very little to look forward to.

Tony Maxey ● 4300d

Yes, at one time the borough of Ealing must have been lovely countryside and beautifully bucolic - now its very much part of a great city. I dunno which I prefer.

Gerry Tan ● 4300d

Yes Gerry late 50’s early 60’s I lived on the Lime Tree estate before the tower blocks were build we were surrounded by open fields. We moved to Gurnell Grove when it was a bit nicer and again we were surrounded by fields on one side was a commercial dump that went as far back as the A40, on the other side there was 4 acres of fields for us kids to play in then across the road was Pitshanger park. We used to make rafts and sail the river when we went through our pirate stage and not a fox in sight.

Tony Maxey ● 4300d

Wild rabbits in West Ealing and horses feeding in Northolt gardens eh Tony!  Crickey, that must have been ages ago. I'm a townie, but I see foxes as vermin.

Gerry Tan ● 4300d

As a lad growing up in Northolt I remember horses coming into our garden and feeding from our flower bed. When we moved up to West Ealing we would catch rabbits and field mice. Now with the urban sprawl and the arrival of the fox you wouldn’t see a wild rabbit anywhere in London. In my eyes foxes are the same as rats they are not cute and cuddly they are vermin and should be culled.

Tony Maxey ● 4300d

It depends whether you're a 'townie' or 'countryperson' as to one's view about calling foxes vermin or not I guess.

Gerry Tan ● 4300d

On researching the matter I find foxes are not legally defined as vermin, the definition from the Oxford dictionary gives vemin as 'Wild animals which are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or which carry disease, e.g. rodents:' So this definitely would apply to foxes.

Graham Weeks ● 4300d

Whether they're 'vermin' or not, the nearby Ealing foxes seemed to be out in force on these warm dry nights - probably going after all the evening BBQ debris left by neighbours and the Walpole Park revellers.

Gerry Tan ● 4300d

It isn't mine and that, as far as I'm concerned, is what counts.

Albertina McNeill ● 4301d

I think you will find that vermin is the legal definition of foxes.

Graham Weeks ● 4301d

Not unless you're in the habit of dumping the remains of your takeaway on the way home from the pub and mating noisily in the street. The "countryside" definition of "slob" might be different to mine. I don't regard foxes as vermin, but that might just be because we have a better class of fox in Greenford. I can tell by what they've nicked from the vegetable garden, nasturtiums and rocket. They've probably moved here from Chiswick.

Albertina McNeill ● 4302d

No. It is a reference to this quote from Mrs. Patrick Campbell.Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!Reply to a young actress who asserted that an older actor in a production showed too much affection for the leading man (c. 1910); as reported by Alan Dent in Mrs. Patrick Campbell, p. 78 (1961).

Graham Weeks ● 4302d

I think you ride them to chase the foxes.......

Ros Harrison ● 4302d

Where do the horses come into things?

Debbie Edwards ● 4302d

I ignored the part about slobs as I am not one. I hope you were not suggesting I take it to heart?

Graham Weeks ● 4302d

Ha ha, a good laugh Albertina!

Gerry Tan ● 4302d

You must have missed the part about slobs - or do you think rats are in the habit of buying their own takeaways?

Albertina McNeill ● 4302d

Rats mating noisily? Who else hears them?

Graham Weeks ● 4302d

I'd rather have foxes than the rats fed by every slob who dumps the remains of their takeaway on the way home from the pub. When they mate in the street the noise is enough to frighten the foxes.

Albertina McNeill ● 4303d

Brought up in the countryside I consider them as what they are. Vermin. Not experienced many of late but when they mate in the street the noise is enough to frighten the horses, if there were any.

Graham Weeks ● 4303d

I too have noticed a marked increase in their activity recently in the roads and gardens around Hanger Lane.Is this because ill-informed residents continue to feed them?Or is this spell of particularly warm weather encouraging them out of their burrows?

Mark Walker ● 4303d

There is no shortage of food but there is a shortage of territory.As a result they continue to conquer new ground.They are territorial animals and each new male fox (of which there are plenty) must carve out its own territory.Since we got a dog five years ago we no longer have foxes - which I must confess I used to find quite endearing.Prior to that we had them for fifteen years.In the summer, when working late at night with the door open, they were known to venture catiously into the house - scarpering pronto if I made even the slightest of movements.Instead they now sit in next door's garden taunting our dog into barking at them.

Tony Colliver ● 4303d

Foxes dislike Jeyes Fluid.

Keith Iddon ● 4304d

Neighbours of ours returned from holiday to find that foxes had dug a hole near their garden shed and made a home under the shed - much to their surprise and annoyance.

Gerry Tan ● 4304d

We've had a neighbourhood fox for years, occasionally seen loping across the road late at night, ripping open the bins if given a chance, and digging up our late cat when we buried him in the garden (Thanks for that, Brer Fox).

Susan Kelly ● 4304d