Foxes and Fings

Somebody must of told the local Minster foxes about my mention in the last blog about culling them because all of a sudden they've become very active in my rear garden.

My two Jack Russell terriers sleep in my conservatory across the rear of the bungalow and in the early hours one night last week, the older and more aggressive of the two woke me with non-stop barking and the outside intruder light was on. Thinking it was an intruder in the garden I rushed naked into the conservatory (as one does when wishing to frighten an intruder), to find the dog was staring through the glass door and up the garden at a fox sitting in the middle of the lawn. I let the dog out and the fox just cleared the six foot panel fence before the terrier reached it, although the dog's barking must of convinced the sleeping neighbours around me that a full scale Hunt was taking place. Ellie, the younger terrier also went up the garden with high speed bravado but kept carefully just behind the older one, just in case she got there first.

The next night we not only had a repeat at 2.00 in the morning, but this time there were three of the bloody things doing a fox-trot round the garden. So once again we had torches flashing, me nakedly shouting, dogs barking, and once again the foxes got away. A visit to the shrubbery at the top of the garden during daylight hours found that not only did it strongly reek of that particular fox odour but that they were obviously coming over the tall, six foot panel fence in one corner. Clearly something better than my anti-cat deterrents were going to be needed if I were to prevent nightly visits from these vulpine vermin who, unlike domestic moggies, aren't legally protected when shitting in somebody else's garden, or killing wild birds.
Clearly discharging a gun in the middle of the night couldn't be added to the list of dogs barking, and my shouting whilst nakedly shining a torch, that my neighbours were compiling and so I had to temporarily improve the fencing. So yesterday I added a line of three feet high wire netting to the top of the fence and lots of nice, thorny rose branches, looks a right mess but last night at least, I was fox free.

Also last night, I was talking to a friend who knows about these things, and it was stated that foxes won't go where they can smell male, human urine. Mmmm, now that's a thought but then I'm not sure. Imagine after the last few escapades, my neighbour looking out of his bedroom window in the middle of the night and seeing me, John Thomas in hand, urinating up the fence! - kind of hard to convince him that it was to do with foxes and not some new perversion, plus on cold, frosty nights the little human hose-pipe doesn't work too well.