By Tony Chalcraft
A friend, knowing I’m increasingly taunted by foxes, recently pointed out some Facebook posts. One was a nighttime photo of a fox sitting on the platform at York station as though waiting for a train, and another of a fox looking longingly at the Fox pub in Holgate. Foxes are now everywhere in York, including the garden! Forty years ago, I’d probably see a fox a couple of times a year – now it can be several times a day, often well after dawn and hours before dusk. You might think I should be grateful, privileged even, to share the garden with foxes. And, I would be, if their habits and antics weren’t so annoying.
Some of their behaviour is comical. There’s the occasional unwanted gift, including tennis and golf balls, dog chews and half-eaten pork pies. I’ve gathered the balls together in a neat circle; it’s quite a collection. Some nights, a fox will undertake a rearrangement or take a ball away, usually dropping it elsewhere. Less amusingly, there’s four-legged theft and vandalism. Leather shoes have been stolen and left gnawed and part-shredded. More menacingly, a purloined leather glove had its fingers chewed off.
For those of us trying to cultivate, most fox behaviour is far from playful. Foxes turn over earth and scuff and tread loose soil. This means newly sown seeds risk being scattered, and freshly set out plants uprooted. Erecting wire netting is now a tiresome necessity for many new crops. Because a determined fox will easily leap anything lower than one metre, plastic netting strung between wire is also often needed as a further deterrent.
Then there’s the apparent fox fascination with fleece covers, used to protect crops such as carrots from insect pests. Not only do these provide comfy resting spots, but, especially when wet, induce nocturnal prancing. Many a morning after a rainy night, I’ve come out to find flattened fleece, pocked by claw punctures and stained with muddy footprints. Worse still, the crop foliage underneath can be crushed.
While much fox disturbance of soil is shallow, sometimes extensive excavations are undertaken. Often these are random, in the middle of a bed or crop, and for no apparent purpose. The perpetrators are surprisingly persistent. There are several places where I frequently fill in deep holes, only for these to be dug out again in the same spot days or weeks later.
There’s plenty more maddening fox traits. Barking and screeching in the middle of the night. The pungent and musky smell from their scent glands, and urine that lingers for days. I won’t mention their toilet habits further, other than to say pathways appear to be a favoured location. If you keep hens as I do, there’s also the constant fear that a fox will find a weak spot in the defences and carry out a massacre. And what about the impact of large numbers of foxes on other wildlife, both through competition for food and predation? It may be correlation rather than cause, but as foxes have increased in the garden, so hedgehogs have disappeared.
Various harmless odour-based repellents and sound or light-emitting deterrents are available to discourage foxes. I’m reluctant to use these, partly because other wildlife could be disturbed. But, patience is wearing thin.
Time to stop being outfoxed and try outfoxing the foxes?
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