As I left the office today, I suffered the usual problem of forgetting exactly where I parked my car. As I walked the streets in the chill gloom of dusk I came face to face with a fox. She (for I think it was a vixen) was a healthy looking creature, proud and confident. Beautiful even. She was coming out of someone’s front path as I walked by. We both stopped, about a metre from each other. She looked at me indifferently, waited for me to walk on, and then emerged from the pathway, lingering on the pavement and taking her time to decide which way she felt like going.
There was a woman in a porch a few doors down, waiting for a door to be answered. I made a comment about how bold the foxes are now. She agreed.
When I got home I asked if our moulting chicken had been locked up for the night. I normally do this and it normally has, but tonight it hadn’t been. “Well the foxes are out tonight,” I said. I grabbed my torch and set off to the back of the garden.
I found her under an arch, decapitated and the body still warm. She was a lovely little bird, this one, and her new feathers had grown to the point that I was going to put her back in to the main enclosure this weekend. For the past few days she had been kept away from the rest of the flock because they had been pecking her. She had been housed in the “isolation ward”, a converted guinea pig hutch. Each evening we would visit her and lock her up in her hutch. On one occasion she was even in there waiting for us. Clearly, she had made her way back home this evening, too. The fox had dragged her out and killed her, making off with the head and leaving the rest behind. I will miss this bird. Over the past few days, watching her new feathers emerge bit by bit, I had grown very fond of her.
I live in suburban London. I remember the move to ban fox hunting, and the marching of the animal rights groups and the Countryside Alliance. The arguments went further than the humanity or otherwise of fox hunting. The debate polarised. You were either a fox killer or a fox protector. Many people started feeding foxes when they didn’t before. I remember also, more recently, when a bold fox stole into a house in suburban London and mauled two twin babies. I watched the news with a feeling of ironic sadness, seeing the local people calling for a cull of foxes in London. How many of these people were in favour of protecting foxes at the time of the marches, I wondered? How many had been feeding foxes in their back gardens each evening?
I don’t like foxes; they kill my chickens. I don’t like fox feeders; they think they are being animal friendly towards harmless, cuddly, maligned creatures, when really they are strengthening a growing population of predatory animals whose natural inclination is to kill.
Yet really I have only myself to blame. It is my duty to ensure that the chickens are locked up each night and this I acknowledge.
That’s how I lost my first bunch of chickens… it was a cold, rainy night and I was too lazy to go out and lock the coop. I remember thinking, “They’ll be OK – what’s going to come out and get them in this kind of weather?”
The next morning, all I found of them where feathers all over the place.
Even tho’ I think it was raccoons instead of fox, I still learned my lesson. No matter the weather outside or how under-the-weather I may be feeling, I always make sure my Ladies are a locked up at night. It was a sad lesson for me.
My condolences