Phormium tenax 'All Black'

Noooooo to the shotgun idea please ! : o )))

Sadly this fox is a bit of a bugger.

He's learnt how to open our shed ... he came into our house a couple of weeks ago (Bella, our cat saw him off) and on Thursday of this week he got in through our next door neighbours kitchen door and ran off with her handbag and chewed it up.

The sod is brazen ... a couple of weeks ago, my neighbour had taken off her shoes to put her wellies on by her kitchen door ... the fiend snatched one of her shoes whilst she was still standing there

He's dug out all of our slow worms, frogs - even our newly found toad has gone - all chewed up and left on the lawn.

Not to mention the huge amount of missing gardening gloves, holes in the garden where plants, bulbs and veg used to be

We have a bit of a problem here truth be told, the foxes and the magpies are killing everything :-(

can he be trapped and perhaps released someplace more suitable? He seems unusually bold.

Now that's one verynaughty ... don't send him down to me !
Our local football ground regularly has fox droppings on it, sadly a Fox was found dead, entangled in the net at the goal.

You're probably right, Laura. We are literaly on the edge of the South Downs here ... so I have a feeling he might just wander back. He's probably only a year old (the rest of the foxes are much better behaved around here) ... but, in truth, we'd rather he didn't find a mate ... we don't want his traits carrying forward really.

He's also really noisy - screeching at all hours.

Shirley, that's a very sad end for your sporty fox :(

Over-night last night he's chewed all of the straps off of a tent.

We don't want to be cruel to him ... just go away one way or another.

We're going to get our heads together and come to a decision.

Over here, when there's a problem with a fox or other wild animal, it's often because some fool has tried to domesticate it. I work for animal control (well, for now - I had a huge argument with my supervisor Friday because cages are not being cleaned properly, so who knows if I'll have a job come tomorrow) so we do see quite a few complaints like this. Last year we got a call from a woman in a neighborhood about some young foxes. The residents had been feeding them and trying to befriend them the previous year (because they were so cute, you know); the foxes were just babies at the time. Fast forward a year later - now the foxes had had human contact but were of course still wild animals, and were becoming aggressive and extremely bold. The residents were in a panic ("they're a danger to the children!") and naturally the poor foxes had to pay the price for human stupidity.

Laura, it's quite possible you're right. Live and let live is my moto.

For the moment we've all decided to noisily shoo it off, hopefully make it less sure of itself ... they're smart animals, hopefully he'll soon learn he's not quite so safe as he thought (he's out in the day and night).

Foxes are considered vermin in urban and suburban areas, if we bring it to the attention of environmental health as a pest, they'll simply kill it ... and we don't want that to happen.

I hope you're argument with your supervisor can be worked out :)