Encounters with Foxes

This morning I woke up at 5am, in time to peer out and see a fox poking around in the bird bath and then disappearing up the garden path.  I don't know how many of this family there are at the moment - he's the only one I've seen recently. There used to be a family of golden flapjack-coloured foxes who were very much at home here. They would come right up to the house several times a day, check out the pots and any likely pickings and then roam around perfectly at home at the top end of the garden.

When the fox family had cubs a particularly bold baby came up when I was sitting bare-footed in a garden chair reading a book. It was quite unaware of me but very interested in my foot and I waited to see how near it would venture  to come. Like all babies it was extremely curious about everything and especially what might be good to eat. Suddenly it bit my toe with its sharp little teeth to see what it was made of. Blood spurted out, I gave a shout, the foxling fled in alarm and I felt I had really connected with the garden's wildlife.


Foxes are sly, cunning, mischievous and always hungry as the medieval tales of Reynard the Fox point out. They also make good parents. The ones in my garden bring in food and toys. Where they get the hen's eggs from I have no idea, but I frequently find broken eggshells lying around and once saw a fox carrying an egg in its mouth and another time found one lounging on the lawn  eating an egg.

Friends of mine down the road find the local foxes bring their take-aways into the garden and then leave the pizza wrappings lying around. Apparently dirty nappies are popular with certain foxes, but the ones in my garden seem to concentrate on bringing in small teddy bears, bouncy balls and large gardening gloves, of which I now have several different styles, some of them rather expensive. They have had a lot of fun tearing up some wool insulating material I had laid over the roots of an echium to protect it from the cold. There were little tufts of fluffy material throughout the whole garden and it took me ages to collect it all up. 

One autumn the golden coloured male fox had an out and out fight for territory with a darker, ginger biscuit-coloured incomer. With loud barks and screeches they rampaged through the garden and several gardens on either side leaping over the fences and hedges.  The newcomer obviously won because I never saw the other fox family again. The usurping family has remained but it is rather different in character. Individually they are more wary, not so keen to come up to the house, more likely to be found in concealed places, rather than right out in the open on the lawn.

I keep a sharp eye on them because I don't want to find a fox family living in a den  dug behind the garden shed.  So when I see they have been digging, I make sure to fill the hole with bricks so they think it's not worth while to carry on. So far that's worked.

I have a tentative relationship with the foxes. I admire enormously their ability to trot along the top of the trellis or to find, steal and so delicately break into an egg. Part of me is pleased to be sharing this space with them, another part is wary of their potential to play havoc with my carefully tended environment. The sight of one  of them in the garden gives me a frisson of excitement and pleasure - and a warning note, for they are the silky, seducing scammers of the animal world.