London

John O'Connell

It’s a calm, clear January night. I’m on the verge of sleep when the air is electrified by a high-pitched shrieking from outside the window. On and on it goes, for over an hour. I ask my wife: ‘What the hell is that?’ ‘Foxes,’ she says. ‘Vixens shriek in the breeding season to attract dog foxes.’
It takes us several hours to get back to sleep.

In the morning, there’s a sour, asparagus-piss smell in the downstairs hall. I open the front door and the smell ratchets up by a factor of 20. The foxes have relieved themselves on the doorstep, then dragged a rubbish bag out of the wheelie bin, scattering its contents all over the road. I put on rubber gloves and gingerly pick the used nappies out of the slime of rotting vegetables and coffee grounds. Feature continues

Some people think urban foxes are cute. They leave food out for them – plates of raisins and peanuts, saucers of milk. Insane Canadian bear-lover Timothy Treadwell, the subject of Werner Herzog’s hilarious film ‘Grizzly Man’, has nothing on these people, though alarmingly their behaviour is encouraged by bodies such as the Essex Wildlife Trust, which advises: ‘If you know foxes visit your garden and you want to help them, by all means put out food for them… But it is best not to make them tame by hand-feeding. The results could be that they lose their fear of people and start to enter houses and approach people who may be alarmed or annoyed by this behaviour [my italics].’ I love this sentence, especially its implication that such alarmed/annoyed people are wall-eyed reactionaries who bathe in their own children’s blood.

Foxes are wild animals. They are also pests, like rats – scavengers who live off human refuse. They harbour infections, including (on the continent) rabies. There are over 10,000 of them in London, not just because Londoners are incorrigible sentimentalists, but because the law prohibits their poisoning or shooting. (You can trap them and repel them, but neither method works very well.) I’m tempted to propose a Great London Hunt in pearly garb, with Otis Ferry and Madonna at the vanguard.