Fox attack

Beausmate said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21399709

Must have been frightened, eh? :rolleyes:
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If it will take a lamb it will take a baby.
I previously lived where sentimental townies fed foxes dog food every night. Yes they are beautiful creatures, but they should really be discouraged from getting to close to houses. I would bet someone has been feeding foxes near to where this baby was attacked.
Another thing people fail to grasp in towns, is that no one worms them & they can spread toxoplasmosis to young children,as well as mange to domestic pets.
Our neighbours cat lost part of his tail in a fox attack; he had a lucky escape.
 
missroses nanna said:
Wonder how long it will be befor they ask the hunt to help rid london of its foxes ?
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EXACTLY! :)

I say bring back Tony Blair; it being his wonderful decision to ban foxhunting - OK so give the jerk a job and get him to sort the urban fox problem out.

Can foresee the horrible wicked cruel person who kicked & mistreated the poor helpless fox to make it let go of the baby being prosecuted for "animal cruelty" by the good old RSPCA......
 
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MiJodsR2BlinkinTite said:
EXACTLY! :)

I say bring back Tony Blair; it being his wonderful decision to ban foxhunting - OK so give the jerk a job and get him to sort the urban fox problem out.
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I don't think you will find hunting or not has anything to do with the urban fox population.
Pretty sure Tony Blair has nothing to do with it personally either TBH.

Echo Bravo said:
No leave the foxes where they are as these are the softies that banned hunting let them reap what they have sown.
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See that's so weird because in all the debates I've read the pro hunt people are always making reference to the fact that the amount they actually catch is so minimal it has no impact on the overall fox population,and yet it contributes to the urban fox population,how strange:confused:

Urban fox population has no relevance to hunting,simply that we are slowly encroaching on all their natural habitat and driving them INTO our cities and towns,kind of our own fault rather than the foxes.

Terrible for the family,but I suspect there is the usual amount of tabloid and news drama,and probably wasn't as serious as it sounds.

They aren't going to get rid of the foxes,but educating people about how to manage them might get rid of the problem,and allow each species to share the same space.
 
The press need to get a grip, I saw on the news some neighbour claimed to have seen at least 20 foxes in his street:eek::rolleyes:. When you consider how many people seek attention at hospitals for dog bites, urban foxes are really no threat.
 
Not many British left in London lol...

My goodness, the townies & 'do gooders' are reaping what they sew. Hilarious, if it wasn't so sad, especially for the baby.
 
4x4 said:
If we leave our doors open the rats/mice come in but no foxes out here in the countryside - they're too scared of us!
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You're not wrong! I have foxes in our woods - which are only a couple of hundred yards from the garden - but in 25 years I've NEVER seen as fox come into the garden. Why? Because we have dogs, including a little monster terrier who'll go after anything!

Wild animals are only 'dangerous' when they lose their fear!
 
devonlass said:
I don't think you will find hunting or not has anything to do with the urban fox population.
Pretty sure Tony Blair has nothing to do with it personally either TBH.



See that's so weird because in all the debates I've read the pro hunt people are always making reference to the fact that the amount they actually catch is so minimal it has no impact on the overall fox population,and yet it contributes to the urban fox population,how strange:confused:

Urban fox population has no relevance to hunting,simply that we are slowly encroaching on all their natural habitat and driving them INTO our cities and towns,kind of our own fault rather than the foxes.

Terrible for the family,but I suspect there is the usual amount of tabloid and news drama,and probably wasn't as serious as it sounds.

They aren't going to get rid of the foxes,but educating people about how to manage them might get rid of the problem,and allow each species to share the same space.
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Exactly my thoughts.
 
Trouble is when this sort of thing happens the city wildlife people tend to round up a batch of foxes and turn them loose to die a horrible death in the countryside where they have no idea how to hunt properly and give the local fox population terrible mange and other more common in the urban foxes parasites not a good scenario at all
I am neither pro or anti hunting I can see both sides but this I think is criminal Urban foxes cannot survive comfortably in a rural setting they have evolved into a totally different Yes genetically the same but very different in their lifestyle animal now
 
If the urban foxes carry on the way they are, with their increasing size and boldness, how long before there are serious problems?

Turning an urban fox loose in the country would be a tad unfair. Bit like the poor rehab foxes, released by a large, well-known animal charity who 'come to call' when the farmer goes out with his rifle.

To a fox, people should not = food.
 
My son is at university in Sheffield. He was walking along the street and saw a fox in front of him sitting on a garden wall. Being a country lad, who is used to foxes bolting at the first sign of a human he was amazed that it made no attempt to move, just sat there, as he put it "eyeballing " him, while he walked past within a couple of feet of it. He said it quite unnerved him that it obviously had no fear of him.
 
devonlass said:
Urban fox population has no relevance to hunting,simply that we are slowly encroaching on all their natural habitat and driving them INTO our cities and towns,kind of our own fault rather than the foxes.

Terrible for the family,but I suspect there is the usual amount of tabloid and news drama,and probably wasn't as serious as it sounds.
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Um - do you know how stupid your first para is - if 'encroachment' was driving rural foxes into cities where would encroachment in cities drive them?? There have ALWAYS been urban foxes living in cities - they have adapted to excessive development because cities are where they were BORN! They know the environment. Urban foxes who are forcibly relocated to the countryside by well-meaning people DON'T adapt quickly enoughto survive as a rule.

Come to think of it, your 2nd para is just as stupid. Would you think having to put your 4 week old baby through 3 hours of surgery to replace a finger TORN from its hand was not 'serious'??:rolleyes:
 
JanetGeorge said:
Um - do you know how stupid your first para is - if 'encroachment' was driving rural foxes into cities where would encroachment in cities drive them?? There have ALWAYS been urban foxes living in cities - they have adapted to excessive development because cities are where they were BORN! They know the environment. Urban foxes who are forcibly relocated to the countryside by well-meaning people DON'T adapt quickly enoughto survive as a rule.

Come to think of it, your 2nd para is just as stupid. Would you think having to put your 4 week old baby through 3 hours of surgery to replace a finger TORN from its hand was not 'serious'??:rolleyes:
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Talking sense as ever Janet. Foxes are not driven into the city, they take advantage of the great quantity of food available and breed accordingly. I cannot believe the comments where people feed them and treat them as pets on FB today either. When I lived in London some 8 years ago we had a lot of foxes around and they would happily raid bins constantly. As for not being a serious injury... foxes will kill young lambs, cats and entire coops of chickens (first hand experience, not friend of a friend of a friend..) so a 1 month old baby is not really different. People need to respect foxes as wild animals not a disney character.
 
Crugeran Celt said:
That's what I thought, hunting ban lifted in the not to distant future?
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I can't see the hunt wanting to be involved, unless its because the huntsman expertise is called up to deal with this, without the hunt members being around. No huntsman would want to be given a number of dumped urban foxes to hunt in the countryside, hunting is entirely about balance and also about countryside preservation and the foxes that were killed were old or sick. The best and the fittest survived. Hunting a number of foxes who have no fear of man, no understanding of dogs would be quite abhorrent.
 
Where I used to line (Chorlton-c-Hardy in Manchester) there was a growing number of foxes. I lived there for a number of years before I saw one in the garden. As I previously posted a man regularly put down dog food for them.
The foxes in Manchester are in poor condition, there seems to be a mange outbreak. A work colleague asked me just this week what to do, as she had seen a fox in very poor condition in broad daylight on the South Manchester Cycle Loop. From her description it sounded as this poor animal had very advanced mange.
What people do not realise is that these animals will spread disease to cats & dogs & indeed to children from the parasites they carry. There sadly needs to be a culling programme in our big cities & people should be discouraged from feeding them.
 
Honeylight said:
The foxes in Manchester are in poor condition, there seems to be a mange outbreak.
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I think the "urban" foxes around here - my area is quite rural but I refer to the foxes that seem to prefer living close to people, in back gardens, under sheds etc., than truly wild ones. All the urban ones seem to be mangey - I'd go so far to say that it was endemic rather than an epidemic -whereas I saw a dog fox in full flight go across my lane just before the snows - in tip top condition - certainly an advert for country living!

Many of the urban variety here seem to be using railway land to get from place to place - we recently cleared a property in Chorleywood only to see a couple of mangey foxes stroll passed us on a well worn track besides the Chiltern choo-choo and Metroline embankment.
 
Our house backs onto a small woodland, and in the 6 years we've been here, I've seen a fox in the street twice. first time he was in our drive, peering in the window. He comes out of the access road to the woods, saunters up the street and comes to ours looking for a way back into the woods. he is beautiful, but I wouldnt dream of leaving a gate open to let him in, or putting food out for him.
 
We dont Mangy town Foxes out here I have stupid Bloo** neighbour who feeds the local foxes and what they leave the the Magpies come for these can be potted off in my trees:D but I cannot let loose with the 22.250 at the foxes:(:( as much as I would like to.
 
A guy was just on Radio 4 speaking from 40 year's experience of foxes and said he's never seen nor heard of an aggressive one - bold, yes, but not aggressive. He seemed to place the ball firmly in the council's court for limiting their numbers by removing their food sources - large scale culling went for decades before being dropped as ineffective as there were more foxes than when they started culling.

This rings true because in horticulture, there is a school of thought for natural predators and the maxim for that is: pest in first. So you tolerate a small number of greenfly (say) so there will always be food for the parasitic wasps that are introduced. If all rubbish was cleared away and feeding was made illegal then the fox population would reduce and their natural behavior would return to larger ranges and competition would mean far less in towns.
 
I've certainly noticed that rural foxes look much healthier than their rural cousins which suggests the rural diet is more natural than scavenging on all that junk food.Perhaps a good old McDonald's will do for them what the hunt can't.Last year friends in France lost their chickens to a fox,observed by their foster child from the Congo who had no idea what a fox is,otherwise he would have shot it.
 
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