Foxes

[rodent279]

We've been having our milk nicked by Mr Fox. We've had milk delivered ever since we moved in here, which is 4 years now, usual delivery is one 1.15ltr plastic bottle and 1 pint glass bottle. The milkman leaves it behind a bush beside the front door.

 

Mr Fox has twigged that he has a free food supply here, and started taking the plastic bottle and biting it so that it punctures, then sucking the milk out. He's also had a go at the glass bottle, by biting the top until it punctures, but he's not has as much success.

 

We've lost about 6 bottles this way, so I've built a box that screws to the wall, for the milk, and that has solved the other.

 

Has anyone else known this to happen? How have you solved it? What other things has Mr Fox taken a liking to?

Edited September 9, 2019 by rodent279

[spikey]

Horrible things, foxes.  If they're not trying to kill your chickens, they're waking you up with their barking in the night.  Or depending on time of year, their excessively noisy intercourse.

 

And don't get me started on people who feed them.  And badgers.  And wood pigeons ...

[Bernard Lamb]

In the past I would leave my gardening shoes outside the back door if they were muddy. Foxy found then and removed them. I found one later rather chewed under a tree near the bottom of the garden. Various children's toys turn up from time to time and also take away food wrappings. Peri Peri  would seem to be the favourite for Foxy. Fortunately there they do not seem to have bred in the immediate locality this year.

Bernard

[great central]

5 hours ago, spikey said:

Horrible things, foxes.  If they're not trying to kill your chickens, they're waking you up with their barking in the night.  Or depending on time of year, their excessively noisy intercourse.

 

And don't get me started on people who feed them.  And badgers.  And wood pigeons ...

 

Can't say I'm over keen on humans to be honest, specially the ones near me who spend days on end taking pot shots at anything that moves with what sounds like a ruddy great cannon

[The Lurker]

5 hours ago, spikey said:

, they're waking you up with their barking in the night.  Or depending on time of year, their excessively noisy intercourse.

 

 

It sounds like a couple of female tennis players

[tigerburnie]

This is one of our locals

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

8 hours ago, rodent279 said:

What other things has Mr Fox taken a liking to?

 

Shoes most definitely. We put our muddies in an outhouse so no problem, but out neighbours use an open porch, and a dropped shoe on the route which goes via our garden back to the fox' den is no uncommon thing. Tennis balls too, source unknown, but most likely some dog's lost balls.

 

What once interested them in our garden was the plug for the plastic  liner of the rotary clothes line posthole. They played with it, and usually transported it some distance, until finally it was lost. I have an improvised bung from the split rubber foot of a step ladder. They take it out, but don't then move it about by playing with it.

 

I think there may be some progress in learning wheelie bins too. Cooked food waste is allowed in the compost bin, and obviously that is attractive. But they cannot get in, because once standing on the lid... But on collection day there are multiple bins in close proximity standing on the roadside before and after collection. I have twice seen a fox atop the groups of bins in the last three months, giving the strong impression of trying to figure it out.

[Trainshed Terry]

The milk thief sounds like that it could be a youngster from this year’s breeding season.

Foxes are very adaptable to the environments that they live in and are highly intelligent animals and contra to the belief that they do not kill cats or small dogs; there is no scientific evidence to say that they do.

As for chickens, it is the responsibility of the owners to ensure that the chickens are kept in a fox proof chicken run.  

Let us not forget that humans are invading their natural habitat with the constant building of house and infrastructure projects.

I have some large fields near where I live but I have not seen the local foxes lately as they have dispersed to new territories, but they will be back for the next breeding season in the New Year.

As for feeding of foxes, during the summer months food becomes thin on the ground and deserve the right to live there life. Sometimes human intervention is necessary when the animal is seriously ill by injury or other sources, but that is a choice for the individual to make as there are many charities and animal rescues that will capture and look after sick foxes. .

Terry

[Gwiwer]

We have an intermittent fox problem.  They migrate along the railway lines so one year we have dozens of the critters and the next few years they are much fewer in number.  But they will return in due course.  

 

Despite having rubbish in plastic bins with twist-fit lids these get tipped over and the foxes are adept enough to keep rolling them around until the catch pops open revealing the black sack inside.  This is easily torn open and scavenged leaving a very unpleasant mess on the path next morning.  It also tends to reveal something about the humans since no-one is immune and all bins get "done" from time to time.  It becomes apparent who shops where, for example and we have even had items of an intimate nature found strewn around the lawns where children play.  

 

Foxes are as entitled to share the planet as the rest of us.  We don't agree on social manners and niceties.  But I have found a way to encourage them to scavenge elsewhere.  It's called a Fox Line.  

 

It seems they will not cross a line of human male urine left along the ground.  Every so often after dark a new "line" is created around the bin area.  That should be enough information!

[LBRJ]

Loads of em live around here; we are just enough Country and just enough Suburb to suit the foxy lifestyle.

One thing they DO NOT like is the smell of male piss,.

Im not saying you have to take a leak in your garden, but some spread about the place really does work.

[Trainshed Terry]

14 minutes ago, LBRJ said:

Loads of em live around here; we are just enough Country and just enough Suburb to suit the foxy lifestyle.

One thing they DO NOT like is the smell of male piss,.

Im not saying you have to take a leak in your garden, but some spread about the place really does work.

 

That is to much detail for me. EWWWWW!!!!!!

[Liam]

Foxes are often a pest, but some of them can be very friendly, like this one for example:

 

https://www.basilbrush.com

[J. S. Bach]

On 09/09/2019 at 11:06, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

 

 ...snip... but most likely some dog's lost balls. ...snip...

That had to hurt!

[Fat Controller]

When we lived in the North-East, we had a neighbour who had a pet fox, which he'd presumably reared from a cub. We used to get our tomato plants from him, and it was a mite disconcerting seeing a fox sitting guard at the greenhouse door.

[justin1985]

On 09/09/2019 at 08:26, rodent279 said:

We've been having our milk nicked by Mr Fox. We've had milk delivered ever since we moved in here, which is 4 years now, usual delivery is one 1.15ltr plastic bottle and 1 pint glass bottle. The milkman leaves it behind a bush beside the front door.

 

Surely the beauty of having a milkman delivery in this day and age is being able to get reusable glass bottles, and avoiding wasteful plastic! 

[Liam]

22 minutes ago, justin1985 said:

 

Surely the beauty of having a milkman delivery in this day and age is being able to get reusable glass bottles, and avoiding wasteful plastic! 

 

Yes, and that’s been the main reason for their increase in popularity. Unfortunately, not everywhere has a milkman, and so people are often compelled to buy milk in plastic bottles from the supermarket.

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, SVRlad said:

 

Yes, and that’s been the main reason for their increase in popularity. Unfortunately, not everywhere has a milkman, and so people are often compelled to buy milk in plastic bottles from the supermarket.

A trend is emerging for farm outlets and some retailers to offer milk sales from a vat or tank to customers bringing their own glass bottles.  As with own coffee cups at the popular brand outlets these must be seen to be clean and the milk is charged for by quantity dispensed rather as petrol is from a pump.

 

A variation on this which I know Trevaskis Farm in Cornwall uses, and others surely do, is to first sell the empty glass bottle which is a pint then the customer re-uses only the bottles sold by that outlet meaning there is no argument - it's a pint every time.  And without any argument over a foaming "head" as can happen with a pint of beer!!!

[Steamport Southport]

Wow! People still have milkmen? Haven't seen one of those for well over twenty years. I thought they had gone the same way as pop wagons and local ice cream vans that go around playing awful tunes.

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Broadway Clive]

  

In my suburban garden in Ilford on the Essex/east London border I tried to create a small wild life 'sanctuary'. But for years I didn't understand how foxes were coming from two neglected properties nearby and I was inadvertently feeding them by trying to increase the number of amphibians in the area by building ponds and joining the British Herpetelogical Society. So entire local populations of common frogs, toads and newts, palmate newts and rare great crested newts have now been entirely eliminated, as were two dozen slow worm lizards. Other species which were confined to my garden were also entirely lost including edible frogs (related to populations in Kent) of which there were nearly a hundred at one time, European yellow bellied toads and Oriental fire bellied toads numbering about 30 each, and now I have just a few Alpine newts and six pool frogs left after 35 years of effort. I'd used pieces of tree trunks to separate lawn from plants and they became populated by stag beetle larvae until foxes eventually tore all the logs apart to eat them!

 

Our pet rabbit also got eaten, and pond linings were damaged by foxes digging for worms, plus lots of digging, pissing and damage to plants and lawn, and a transparent garage roof was repeatedly broken. Since the neglected houses were recently cleared I've spent over £5000 and spent many hours of work trying to keep them out, and a portable night video camera has shown the extent of the problem with back fences used like arterial roads and the garden used like a dogs' play and poop area. From previous discussions I've had about foxes on social media I feel my ideas about wanting to help a diversity of nature survive locally are probably outdated and politically incorrect, and many would probably like to see myself eliminated and a family of foxes here instead!

 

[friscopete]

On 09/09/2019 at 07:32, spikey said:

Horrible things, foxes.  If they're not trying to kill your chickens, they're waking you up with their barking in the night.  Or depending on time of year, their excessively noisy intercourse.

 

And don't get me started on people who feed them.  And badgers.  And wood pigeons ...

Dont forget woodmice and newts .Savage   .

[friscopete]

3 minutes ago, Broadway Clive said:

  

In my suburban garden in Ilford on the Essex/east London border I tried to create a small wild life 'sanctuary'. But for years I didn't understand how foxes were coming from two neglected properties nearby and I was inadvertently feeding them by trying to increase the number of amphibians in the area by building ponds and joining the British Herpetelogical Society. So entire local populations of common frogs, toads and newts, palmate newts and rare great crested newts have now been entirely eliminated, as were two dozen slow worm lizards. Other species which were confined to my garden were also entirely lost including edible frogs (related to populations in Kent) of which there were nearly a hundred at one time, European yellow bellied toads and Oriental fire bellied toads numbering about 30 each, and now I have just a few Alpine newts and six pool frogs left after 35 years of effort. I'd used pieces of tree trunks to separate lawn from plants and they became populated by stag beetle larvae until foxes eventually tore all the logs apart to eat them!

 

Our pet rabbit also got eaten, and pond linings were damaged by foxes digging for worms, plus lots of digging, pissing and damage to plants and lawn, and a transparent garage roof was repeatedly broken. Since the neglected houses were recently cleared I've spent over £5000 and spent many hours of work trying to keep them out, and a portable night video camera has shown the extent of the problem with back fences used like arterial roads and the garden used like a dogs' play and poop area. From previous discussions I've had about foxes on social media I feel my ideas about wanting to help a diversity of nature survive locally are probably outdated and politically incorrect, and many would probably like to see myself eliminated and a family of foxes here instead!

 

Thats the trouble with wildlife .It will persist in just being its self.

.

[Broadway Clive]

Just now, friscopete said:

Thats the trouble with wildlife .It will persist in just being its self. 

.

Not really, its humans that set the boundaries and we've eliminated the fox's predators and competitors.

[melmerby]

39 minutes ago, Broadway Clive said:

Not really, its humans that set the boundaries and we've eliminated the fox's predators and competitors.

Bring back the Bears & Lynxes, I say!

[rodent279]

5 hours ago, justin1985 said:

 

Surely the beauty of having a milkman delivery in this day and age is being able to get reusable glass bottles, and avoiding wasteful plastic! 

We get a pint in a glass bottle, and 1.14ltr in plastic, but we're changing the order to 3x glass bottles each delivery. It's part of an effort to reduce our single use plastic consumption. I know the plastic bottles get recycled, but it's still more wasteful than re-using a glass bottle.

[brianusa]

We don't have many foxes but raccoons, squirrels and 'possums abound with the occasional black bears.  We had a family of raccoons, mother and four kits and if you can resist them with their cute masked faces, you must indeed be very hardened, even though they dig in the garden and get in the pond!  They have now moved on now and calm is restored.

      Brian.