One
presenter was recalling the times when occasionally you would see one and it
would run off when spotted. This morning
he was about to get into his taxi and the fox is standing almost next to him. Direct eye contact produces only a look that
says, “yeah...and ?”
People have been talking about these perceived shifts for years and not just in relation to
an animal most notably associated with Britain.
I have always particularly enjoyed the footage of bears falling into and
knocking over bins in the northern States and Canada.....mind you, they
were not my bins.
Anyway,
I don’t need any of that. I have enough
trouble with the indigenous wildlife in Somerset.
I'm reasonably confident that the badgers have been excluded but - as my badly
punned tweets about Herb N. Fox indicate – other problems continue.
One
of the remarkable things is that I can be reasonably sure what is forever
digging holes in my lawn. I've not
only seen them wandering around on my patio at 4:00 in the morning, I've
almost tripped over the blessed animals outside my front gate mid-evening in
broad daylight.
It’s
true that I’m lucky enough to live right on the edge of a rural town but, at
the risk of seeming hackneyed, it never used to be like this.
Elsewhere
in the world it’s often said that these unwelcome encroachments are largely a
product of global warming and other deleterious human impact on the
environment. Ironically, it’s probably
also helped by the compensating reaction of many - that of greater empathy with and
support for our wildlife.
Personally,
I have always been an animal lover but I must confess that my goodwill
towards foxes is about to run out. As
for seagulls, well they fell off the
Christmas list two or three years ago.
It
made me wonder this morning, of course, how much of this will and can
reasonably be attributed to eight years in force of the Hunting Act. Prior
to 2004 one estimate put the number of foxes killed by registered hunts each
year at between 21,000 and 25,000, which in turn was said to be about 5% of
overall fox mortality per annum.
There
was also evidence to indicate substantial regional variation with hunting said
to account for as many as 50% of mortalities in Wales - for reasons unknown.
A
couple of years ago we were plagued (ok – slight over-statement) by a couple of
rats for a few weeks. A fox cub was
witnessed “arresting” one of them.
This
delighted my daughter (as do my references now to “playing tag with Basil around
the garden”). She was also reasonably
pleased when the survivor seemingly died of loneliness, though ironically
had come to rest under the rabbit shed.
But
they are gone and the foxes’ work is done. I wish they’d now clear off back to
the comparative safety of the nearby countryside - or even Wales. I hear they're still a few short..
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