Foxes! Woo!
May. 9th, 2003 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamjarSo, I live in London, and foxes are urban creatures (more in the cities than in the towns) and I've seen a good few foxes, at the other end of the garden, on the road, around derelict land.
And yet...
There's a vixen and four cubs in the back of my garden at the moment. I think the den or whatever may be next door, in the massive bush/tree thing my neighbour has growing at the back of the garden, but they come over to our side to gambol under the watchful eye of their mother.
She's quite small, her tail just about as big as she is (foxes are always smaller than you expect, though my dad says he saw a really big one, strolling around the housing estate further down the road when he went to work) but she looks healthy and the cubs are just- gamboling, like lambs are supposed to, but don't. Little leaps, like Pepe le Pew, while their mother stands on the brick wall at the back of the garden or on the roof of the shed and watches over them.
I sort of approve, since I reckon they keep down the snail and slug population. Now that is how to do organic garden. A step up from nematodes. It must be a great set up for the foxes, since I like in a row of terraced housing, with the end of the garden backing against the garden on the next road over, and with fences rather than walls (although maybe that wouldn't be problem, given that they just walk along the back wall, garden to garden). Even though they're not big gardens, maybe twelve meters long, put all of them together, each with its stock of plants designed to attract things like slugs and snails, little tidbits for a fox to eat, no natural predators, other than the occasional dog...
Foxcubs! So very cute!
And yet...
There's a vixen and four cubs in the back of my garden at the moment. I think the den or whatever may be next door, in the massive bush/tree thing my neighbour has growing at the back of the garden, but they come over to our side to gambol under the watchful eye of their mother.
She's quite small, her tail just about as big as she is (foxes are always smaller than you expect, though my dad says he saw a really big one, strolling around the housing estate further down the road when he went to work) but she looks healthy and the cubs are just- gamboling, like lambs are supposed to, but don't. Little leaps, like Pepe le Pew, while their mother stands on the brick wall at the back of the garden or on the roof of the shed and watches over them.
I sort of approve, since I reckon they keep down the snail and slug population. Now that is how to do organic garden. A step up from nematodes. It must be a great set up for the foxes, since I like in a row of terraced housing, with the end of the garden backing against the garden on the next road over, and with fences rather than walls (although maybe that wouldn't be problem, given that they just walk along the back wall, garden to garden). Even though they're not big gardens, maybe twelve meters long, put all of them together, each with its stock of plants designed to attract things like slugs and snails, little tidbits for a fox to eat, no natural predators, other than the occasional dog...
Foxcubs! So very cute!
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-09 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-10 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-05-10 12:54 pm (UTC)the foxes don't surprise me, but a couple years ago there was a bad attack of heron. A heron decided to live off f garden ponds in the area, pretty much clearing out most of the big goldfish and koi.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-10 06:29 pm (UTC)[I didn't realise you were a fellow Londoner]
I love seeing urban foxes - they're just - nifty.
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Date: 2003-05-11 12:56 am (UTC)