(Not so) fantastic Mr Fox

[PipW]

Is anybody else who lives in the Archdale/ North Cross/ Nuffield/ Crathew/ Frogley Road area getting fed up with foxes making a racket at night? Before the animal rights brigade get on my case, you should try being woken up by them almost every night for a month.

I've peered bleary eyed out of my window on numerous occasions - there's three of them and they're playing/fighting rather than shagging (so at least we're spared the murdered baby noise).

A friend suggested a pack of hounds (it was a joke, Disney lovers!!) but can anybody suggest a more humane way of getting them to shut up/ go away?

Please don't say just put up with it...

[WrightC]

I have the same problem too. I live on Crystal Palace Road, they gather outside my bedroom window shagging etc, very annoying!! I once read that moth balls are good, as foxes hate the smell, however i haven't tried.

[dbboy]

Is it not time for a cull of the foxes?

[lje1985]

Apparently, peeing around your property scares the foxes. People do this to protect chickens they keep in their back garden. To be truly effective, it has to be a man's pee - apparently it smells more scary... Who knew?

[KidKruger]

Peeing around tour property may well work, a friend of mine seemed to have results with that.

So now you can be kept up by the foxes shagging in next door's garden instead.

Result.

[WrightC]

lje1985 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Apparently, peeing around your property scares the

> foxes. People do this to protect chickens they

> keep in their back garden. To be truly effective,

> it has to be a man's pee - apparently it smells

> more scary... Who knew?

Ewww!! Are you serious?

[BrandNewGuy]

Fox culls don't work - you merely provide more territory for other foxes to move into.

Just put up with it ;-)

[Tarot]

The cubs are playing at this time of year.

They are not mating all the time.

You can blame the seventies hippies for their emergence in towns,when they wanted to save them from the huntsmen.

The farmers did,nt help either when they did not maintain their hedges,because of some Euro directive.

To urinate in your garden is very unpleasant,and would be unhygenic for family and neighbours.

Set up cameras in your garden,to watch them play.

You could install a strong light that comes on when something enters the garden,that my deter them.

[DJKillaQueen]

Hunting was never about fox control - let's get that nonsense out of the way. Farmers do still shoot foxes just as they've always done.

The point about hedges and changing use of the countryside is a valid one but urban foxes are in towns for one reason only....because there is an easy and plentiful supply of food. No cull would more effective than getting businesses and residents to dump and bin their food porperly. The ever growing rat population is also benefitting from the poor refuse situation.

[dbboy]

So let's all go pee around the garden perimeter, now that would confuse the fox population

[sandyman]

Or better still pee all over SE22 if it keeps everyone from Brixton and Prckham out.

[pinkhalf]

There used to be a repellant called Renardine that drove them away - it also discourages cats.

[PipW]

I'll bear the peeing suggestion in mind. However, the foxes are out on the street, and I'm not sure what fellow ED residents would make of us relieving ourselves on the public thoroughfare!

Tarot - does the cubs' playfulness last long? When will they go away and get down to the serious business of eating pet rabbits etc?

['bout now]

So that's why I've never seen a Fox in a phone box.

[karter]

Well never mind just the pet rabbit, keep an eye on the babies, foxes are a nuisance and i ended up chasing them down the road at 3am one day this week before a long. hard. heavy. days. work dealing with heavy materials. Buggers. Woof sort them out will you.>(6)

[trentk69]

This could be effective....

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-Barnett-BLACK-WIDOW-Slingshot-Catapult-FREE-Ammo-/230491682038?pt=UK_SportingGoods_Hunting_ShootingSports_ET&hash=item35aa5ff4f6

[ClareC]

We have the same problem in Goodrich :-( screaming every night, leaving excrement and digging up the garden trashing it! They also deposit rubbish in the garden and make holes under the fences!

Totally sick of it too, I wouldn't want them harmed but anything that encouraged them to move out of ED and to the country would be good...... Maybe we need to wait til the cubs are school age and then they will move out to the home counties ;-)

[peterstorm1985]

Annoyingly, Renardine was taken off the market a few years ago. It worked brilliantly; the smell stopped the foxes coming anywhere near the garden. The only trouble was that it put the humans off using the garden too. If you want to try and copy the idea a mixture of tar/creasote/diesel has similar olfactory properties. Male urine does work but ditto effect on human's sense of smell.

As was mentioned above, if you remove the current foxes it will simply open up the space for the next. Not much you can do I'm afraid. One thing I would note though is that there isn't much relationship between the behaviour of urban foxes and country foxes. I've lived out in the country where there were masses of hedgerows and areas of woodland but they're a shy animal there and their territory covers a much larger area, simply because there isn't (and never has been) the abundance of food. The only way to stop them in town is to remove all the food sources.

[timtim]

Get a super soaker filled with water and ammonia mix and spray it on the blighters

[Tarot]

The cubs ,are very playful and do drag things round the gardens,They seem to disappear when Autumn comes.

They like to take paper,and clothes to make nests with, they like to eat mice and rats,take away leftovers and

D,J,K Q, is right, there is an increase of rats in the gardens and streets of E,D, because rubbish isnt thrown away

in bins.

I think at one time they used to sell lions dung to deter cats and foxes.

[uplandsneighbour]

there are only a quarter of a million foxes in this country (that's one fox per 250 people) and only about 30,000 urban foxes (that's one town fox per 1,800 town people).

Think of that when you're chasing a fox down the street at 3 in the morning... it might help you feel quite privileged!

[Sue]

I live in the North Cross Road area, and yes the foxes are noisy and have kept me awake/woken me up, but I love walking down the road at night or looking out of my living room window and seeing a fox - sorry people who want them to go away.

And yes, they have dug holes in my garden and crapped on it and wrecked stuff too. But I'd still rather they were around.

I think it's quite magic having wild(ish) animals around when you live in a city.

I'd rather have fox noise than bloody plane noise :))

[EDOliver]

If anyone wants me to pee in/around there gardens on Friday night let me know, would about midnight be ok when I'm staggering back from LL??

I knew there had to be a use for urine one day!

[karter]

Thanks Oliver that's great, can you pee all the way down cp rd and then Upland rd please, saves me the privilege of chasing them away and will help the neighbours and our babies in their continued sleep. If you have any reserves could also pee up Whatley, a special request. Danke (tu)

[Beagle]

Yip Goodrich Road plagued. Can recall a neighbour throwing up the windows in the early hours and shouting f*** off foxes at them, to no avail. Poop by the door and they have now taken to spraying my front door! It is so rank smelling.

Anyways what we find most effective for temporary relief is shining a torch out the window at them as they bolt - and it can hardly be considered cruel.

I'm too lazy to be a proper beagle.