It was 4.00pm on a quiet Tuesday when the phone rang and I was surprised to hear the voice of my neighbour. I was not quite sure what to expect as the last time he had called, some two weeks before, was to let me know his upstairs neighbour had fallen down the stairs at some stage the morning before, and he had only been found later that same afternoon. The fire service were called as he was lying prone in front of the door and it could not be opened. The Air Ambulance had been notified and arrived in the dark, landing on the rugby pitch just 100 metres away. He was evacuated to Cardiff but died early the next morning. Of hypothermia. Poor fella.
Thankfully this was far better news and it was happening in the small garden below the deceased kitchen window. My neighbour told me to go outside and peek around the corner at his bird feeders, as there was a surprise guest. I grabbed my camera, more in hope than expectation, leaving Yazoo inside and rolled quietly to the corner of the next door flats. I was amazed to see a very healthy looking fox sitting in a relaxed pose feeding quietly from a dish, apparently on peanuts and sunflower seed. I sat as motionlessly as I could before attempting to get some photos. As I did so, the fox was obviously aware of my presence, but carried on feeding for the best part of five minutes.
He was only partly disturbed by some pedestrians walking past on the footpath just a couple of metres away. At least a Leylandii hedge has some benefits! Possibly the bowl had finished or something disturbed him, before he decided to head-off for the rugby pitch at a relaxed canter where he turned to his left, followed the fence and on towards the next door football pitch, up a grassy bank and into the willow beside Arlais brook. It was the first fox I have seen here in nearly thirteen years and a delightful sight. It is hard to imagine how or why anybody can get pleasure chasing them around the countryside in the hope of seeing them torn to shreds by a pack of hounds. How anyone can reasonably justify this as sport is dumbfounding.
So many, largely unfounded myths surround the fox and its supposed savagery, which is in reality an omnivore with a vastly varied diet and rarely weighing more than 10 kgs. Does it really deserve to be described as ‘vermin’, when in Wales there are ten million sheep (otherwise known as woolly Mesopotamian maggots) at peak, and probably around 700,000 cats. If we then consider the fox population is roughly estimated at 25,000, which of these does the most damage to the natural world and would more rightly be deserving of the label? I know where my answer lies.
If we cannot accept foxes somewhere in our outdoors where they pose no real threats, what does this tell us about our own lives and the view we have of the natural world. Do we imagine it should be restricted to our screens on SpringWatch and bluechip David Attenborough documentaries? If so, we surely and sadly impoverish our own lives. Its bloody lovely to see them on my doorstep.
- I am assuming this is a dog fox, judging largely by his size.