There is a fox having a nap in my garden right now...

[Startingagainandagain]

I was in my kitchen and just saw that there is a fox having a nap in the middle of my garden.

Any suggestion of what to do?

We used to have urban foxes living in our communal garden and they just went about their lives when I was in London but I have never had the pleasure of finding one in my own garden....

I don't want to chase it away but I also am wondering if it might be injured (and who to call if it is?) or if it is planning on squatting my garden from now on...

Any advice on how to deal with this?

Pic of the fox below.

I have a cat but it is staying indoor at the moment as I have only had her for a couple of weeks so I am not worried about her being at risk.

Do people have foxes in their garden? do you feed them?

I was woken at about 2.30am by an animal noise, not sure what it was. Looked out of the window, one of my cats was sitting at the top of the path, tail waving in a 'watch yourself' manner. A young fox was advancing warily towards him. Cat didn't move, apart from the tail, fox kept coming. As it finally reached the cat, he raised one of his front paws and gave the poor fox a hefty smack on the muzzle. Fox immediately scarpered and left cat still sitting there, now washing its paws in that 'nothing to see here' manner they've all perfected. Sadly in the days before everyone had a camera on a phone-.

We found a sleeping fox in our garden a few years ago, and I went out to take a closer look. It opened one eye and took a look at me for a few seconds, then clearly decided I was harmless and went back to sleep again! We've not seen one since.

No problem with feeding foxes if you like, but cooked chicken bones can be dangerous for them

You should be able to get at least three fox dinners from the chicken

Also a risk to rabbits and guinea-pigs
Foxes can dig into a run or destroy a hutch .

Though yes , it is the responsibility of the pet owner to make the accomodation safe . We had secure flooring on our PigShed and they only went out in the run during the day when someone was home . Run was secured by heavy tent pegs .
But a load of the popular store bought hutches are feeble ., easy to knock over . A fox looking to feed cubs will go for any easy meal .
And its scary for the rabbits/guineas

Don't forget a lot of foxes are hoaching with mange .

A raw egg in its shell or dog and cat food. Don’t give anything sweet as it rots their teeth!

I get them all the time in my garden they do love eggs and meat although the ones I get turned their noses up at pedigree dog food.
They keep rats and mice down and I find them a pleasure to watch, not so much to listen to the first time I heard those screams I was lying in bed in the dark, it frightened the life out of me.

To update everyone I left at lunchtime to do some shopping and the fox was gone from my back garden when I came back in the evening so it seems it was healthy and just fancied a nap.

I really hope I see it again!

I did find my neighbour's cat lounging in my front garden when I got home so it seems it was a day for furry squatters...

Gorgeous fox 🦊

This was ours:

@Borborygmus

So pretty! I am hoping the fox comes back to visit me.

We have a few who frequent our garden. They nap at the bottom in daytime, away from the house, and they play in the garden in the evening. I don’t feed them - they can look after themselves fine - but they’re nice to watch.

I live in Norfolk and I saw more foxes on a train trip from Waterloo to Richmond than I've ever seen in my home area so they aren't everywhere, or perhaps in my area they prefer the earby woods and fields rather than residential areas.

We have a LOT of foxes here, we see them daily.

Please, please do NOT feed them.

I love the foxes, I watch them playing on the school field behind our house most mornings. I think the way they have adapted to live alongside humans is fascinating. This is despite the fact that I keep chickens and the foxes and I have an ongoing battle to keep my chickens safe and they have taken a lot of chickens over the years.

Your fox looks quite healthy OP, one tell tale sign is their tail. Many foxes suffer from mange and have almost hairless tails, those ones are not healthy.

Why do I say please don't feed? because it significantly changes their natural behaviour, and because it makes them more aggressive towards humans.

Example: The foxes in the field behind us are based around a female who every year has a litter and raises her cubs, playing in the field in the early mornings. She has a den in one of the gardens that backs on to the field. Every year she raises her cubs, and then they grow up and disappear and she chases them away to find their own territory. At various times other foxes come and go, but that was the status quo. Then during lockdown one of the houses started putting food out for the foxes in the school field. The following year the young foxes did not move away, they stayed living in the field, because there was a food source. Not only that but more and more foxes started appearing in the field. Now at dusk there can be a dozen or more foxes coming to be fed. The whole balance of the territories and dens has been disrupted by this feeding. I have no idea what the consequences are for our female. It probably means that she is now mating with her sons, which is unhealthy for her, and it is harder for her to protect her cubs from the other adult foxes who are now around.

mother nature was doing fine, don't interfere.

London has CRAZY amounts of foxes. I grew up somewhere rural-ish where foxhunting was a thing before the ban came in. Never saw one - I actually saw badgers long before I saw a fox (and a ton of pheasants). When I went to London seeing fifteen or sixteen on a single bicycle commute every day of the week wasn’t unusual.

I'm on a Facebook allotment group and one allotmenteer regularly posts daytime fox photos of them "helping out".

We have a fox family. Other than a few 💩 that need removing from the garden, they cause no problems.

Here's one of them last summer.

We have just witnessed ‘stuck together post sex’ foxes. DD came to say foxes acting weirdly and seemed stuck together. I said shagging, she said no, their bums are stuck together. Sure enough a weird 2 headed and seemingly 6 legged creature hopping up and down the garden. Eventually freed themselves and scarpered. Don’t google ‘foxes stuck together’ …….

We have a couple of foxes who visit our garden nightly. They can often be found chilling on the roof of our shed and sometimes wander down the fence and walk around on the flat roof of our extension which always sounds like an intruder is on our roof. They are quite brazen and fearless - I once went in the kitchen on a summers evening and found one eating out of the dog bowl! They love taunt any dogs we have here (we foster) by watching them from the shed roof while said dog is going for a wee. The dogs get themselves in a right state

Lordy! What a sight that must have been.

I used to have one during mating season that barked outside my bedroom window at 3am, trying to get the attention of a lady friend. She would wander past, he would chase her up the street, then he would come back and bark outside my window again and she would run down the street in the opposite direction in a 'chase me' comedy sketch affair. Thankfully I've not had any foxy shenanigans so far this January.

The vixens will lay up/rest around September after bringing up the cubs who will disperse to new territory. The dog will collect food for them while they recuperate.

I had 2 vixens, 5 cubs, a dog fox and an adolescent one summer. The dog fox is very careful and hides behind the shed, one of the vixens was the one that was shot, the cubs moved on and as far as I know the adolescent is still around. I am currently hearing the sounds of a new cub. I have been watching the family for a few years. It began when we moved in, with one scruffy looking fox passing through the garden.

A PP mentioned badgers in their garden and no hedgehogs.

Badgers eat hedgehogs, they unroll them and eat them from the belly so it is unlikely you will find both in the same garden, or even area.

Since I posted on this thread a week or so ago to say that I don’t see foxes very often, I’ve seen 3 on different occasions and locations, and also hear the vixen at night. It is a chilling sound.

Years ago a family of urban foxes made a home under our garden shed. The cubs were very young and I spotted them and our big kitten playing together. So sweet.

We live rurally now and I rarely see foxes.

I’m guessing they tie like dogs do?