The following conversation with Lambeth council pest-control unit took place a few days before a fox attacked two babies. I had rung them to ask for advice about how to control the hordes of foxes roaming my street like hoodies. As I reported last week, the initial signs of a sensible response were not encouraging. Then an animal warden got in touch. Let’s call her Kelly, for she had a cheerful, suburban name a bit like that.
‘We don’t remove foxes,’ said Kelly, ‘but we give advice about how to deter them. If you’ve a family of foxes living in your garden, I can send you some information.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Do you mean to tell me some poor sods have whole families of foxes living in their gardens? Because I’m just complaining about them sitting on my doorstep.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Kelly. ‘Some people have them living in their garden sheds.’
‘Blimey, you must be worried.’
‘Not really. There’s been a lot of research done on London foxes and the numbers are quite stable. If we came along and removed them, it wouldn’t help because more would just come in. The only way is to deter them.’
‘How on earth would I do that?’
‘There are products on the market.’
‘Like bullets and poison, you mean?’
‘No. I’m talking about Scoot.’
‘Scoot?’
‘Yes. Scoot. And Get Off My Garden.’
‘Get Off My…Oh, dear. Look, these things are queuing up outside my house. They’re dangerous. Can’t you just come and remove them?’
‘My job is catching stray dogs. If I started catching foxes, I would just be trapping foxes all day long.’
‘Doesn’t that tell you something? Have you looked into why they’re taking over?’
‘Well, their life is a lot easier in London. There’s more food for them to eat, and they don’t have to hunt for it, they can just take it from bins, from round the back of take-aways…’
‘That’s nice for them. Listen, I understand you don’t want to harm foxes, for reasons of ignorance and political correctness. But would you mind awfully if I finished one off? They’re vermin, you know.’
‘They’re not vermin. You can’t kill them. The RSPCA would do you for cruelty if you trapped them, you would be liable to prosecution…’
‘And if one of them attacked a baby?’
‘I don’t think there’s any risk of that.’
A few days after this conversation a fox mauled two babies in their cot in east London. I wish now I had persisted with that line of questioning, perhaps demanded that she report the matter of marauding foxes higher up. But as it was, I said, ‘OK, maybe that’s being alarmist. But they might eat my pet rabbits.’
‘Yes, they would certainly eat your rabbits.’
‘Can I just ask, am I the only person who has ever rung you to complain about foxes?’
‘Oh, no. I’m getting two to three fox complaints a day. They’re piling up on my desk. And the animal officers in the other boroughs are getting complaints, too.’
‘Right. But just to confirm, you won’t be doing anything?’
‘Well, foxes are part of England’s natural wildlife, like hedgehogs.’
I give up. She promises to put a leaflet in the post. When it arrives it is seven pages of madness. It informs me that the fox is a member of the dog family and that small pets can form a part of a fox’s ‘natural diet’.
There is a cartoon strip showing happy fox families frolicking endearingly and informing me that May is the time when the cubs start to ‘learn through play and eat solid food’. Which is probably why they’ve been turfing rotting garbage out of my bins.
A checklist on deterring foxes recommends about £15,000 worth of renovations to my house and garden including improved brickwork and new fencing. Scoot, it turns out, is an ‘entirely non-toxic spray’, while Get Off My Garden is ‘non-toxic jelly granules that carry a mild citronella smell’.
If you find a fox hole in your garden, you must place twigs across the entrance and check it daily. When three nights have passed without disturbance you may fill in the hole. Except in February to April when you must check the hole for ten days in case there’s a brooding vixen in it.
Householders should not feed foxes because this will cause them to lose their natural fear of humans and bring them into contact with people who could ‘act aggressively towards them’.
I can’t believe we’re having to spell this out to these useless, left-wing loons, but for what it’s worth, here goes: if we don’t ‘act aggressively’ towards foxes, foxes are going to ‘act aggressively’ towards us. In so many ways, the lunatics are running the asylum.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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