To tell my neighbour to stop doing this?

[curiousgeorgie]

My neighbours are both quite elderly, and I only really see them from my window when they're in the garden.

They are obsessed with the foxes.

They have ceramic plates on their decking and they fill them a few times a day with meat, bread & cheese for the foxes to eat.

There are bloody loads of them!! They are in my garden everyday so I worry about DD playing out there, and they also go in our bins and mess with the rubbish almost every night... Every morning I pick up all sorts of rubbish from my front lawn and driveway and am sick of it.

I want to knock on the door and ask them to stop feeding them which is bringing more and more of them here...

AIBU?

And it would definitely restrict how relaxed I could be about my DD's and their friends spending time in the garden.

Ah yes - I had forgotten that one event. Described by experts as "completely unique" and unlikely to "ever be repeated".

I always thought the fox attacks were cover for families who had dogs that they weren't supposed to have as tenants, that ate their children.

Sorry, massive sentence

dogwakesup - apparently there is a lot of controversy about whether the twins attack was genuinely foxes, or some other animal. I don't know. I know it is vanishingly rare, even if it does happen.

Only one thing worse than cat shit on your lawn and that's fox shit.

YANBU but you do need to handle this carefully.

What vile insinuation re the parents of the mauled twins and other families affected.

Fox attacks are v. rare but have happened. A fox won't care that its prey is a human baby rather than a lamb or hen. Fear of humans used keep them away but arseholes like the OP's neighbours are changing that.

Good grief, Totally YABU.

Have you actually seen any foxes eating there? A lot of other animals are also attracted by this sort of food.

Just how many are ''bloody loads'' anyway? It may just be one or two, but you can't tell the difference.

Foxes - generally speaking - are really not aggressive. I have seen several foxes, when confronted by a domestic cat in a back garden, simply turn and leg it.

From your other posts, you seem to be somewhat scared of dogs as well. Do you have an issue with being close to animals?

However, to be totally frank, I am also very wary about my dc being close to unknown dogs.

I am amazed at people on here. Foxes are dangerous. They are not the same as a domestic dog (clue is in the word domestic) . YANBU. I would speak to them politely and maybe call the RSPCA to come and have a gentle chat.

edit

I meant to say - are really not aggressive towards anything as big as them

call the RSPCA

and what would they do?

The more I think about this the more I am sure that I'd mind the fox poo more than the actual foxes IYKWIM.

They are not the same as a domestic dog (clue is in the word domestic)

You're right, dogs are far more dangerous. Apologies that this is from a few years ago, although I'm sure the figures haven't changed much since then:-

There were 6,120 hospital admissions from May 2010 to April 2011, up from 5,810 the previous year, figures from The NHS Information Centre show.

One in six dog injury admissions in the year up to April involved a child aged under 10.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14489360

I think people are being rather disengenuous by expecting the O to have her baby and pre-school child play in a garden frequented by foxes.

Foxes are of the canine family, right? But without the added security of domesticity. You don't know these animals from Adam. How many people would leave their children around domesticated dogs that they don't know, let alone wild animals?

Am I missing something...?!

This is one of those threads, where, had the OP posted along the lines of ...

'AIBU to feed and encourage foxes into our garden? The family next door have a baby and small child and came over to complain yesterday, and to ask us to stop doing it. AIBU to ignore them and continue?'

I can see exactly how that would have gone...

I suspect the figures for dog injuries are far higher than for foxes, because we actually invite dogs into our homes to live with us. Foxes, not so much.

It helps to compare apples with apples - dogs have way, way, way more opportunity to attack.

Foxes, being NOT domesticated, are much shyer and more easily spooked than dogs.

I take your point about the 'opposite' thread .

Oh, OP, just toss yer kids outside.

They'll probably be fine.

I think that the OP is right, in a way and her neighbours are just encouraging the foxes.
We were told by a RSPCA officer that foxes will only breed if there is enough food so by offering them food they are more likely to breed. If they are left to fend for themselves and food is scarce then they will slow down on breeding.
Not totally sure this is correct but if it is OP could really be overrun with foxes.
And I love foxes, we have several in our area and they do sometimes come in the street and gardens. They are beautiful creatures but they are wild and I wouldn't encourage a perfectly able to hunt animal to rely on scraps

Out of interest, how difficult is it to fox proof a garden? Do they jump fences or dig under them? I wouldn't like them lurking in my garden, much as I enjoy watching wildlife.

YABU. I would love to see some foxes in my neighbour's garden! The few that I have seen in 'real life' wouldn't come so close to injure a human of any sort.

When I lived in London I had the same problem. I had six foot fences around my garden (it was a condition of sale with the breeder of my golden retriever). Every morning I would have to patrol the garden before either dogs or DC could go out, checking for fox poo, rank old food or cooked chicken bones (which would have been very dangerous to the dogs). They built a den under my deck when I was on holiday (pulled a loose board away and got under). They attacked a neighbour's cat and took its carcass under my deck so the whole thing had to be dismantled to get rid of the smell and flies and maggotyness of the thing. At mating time we were disturbed night after night by the fighting between males and their awful crying.
The neighbours were very proud that they had never used the waste food composting bin as all their waste food went onto their patio for the foxes.
Now after living six months in the country, I've heard a fox on one night, I've seen a fox on one occasion and he was a beauty. I presume the rest of the time they are up in the woods or on the marshes doing what foxes should be doing.

The RSPCA would talk to the couple and explain exactly what the poster above said. That you are encouraging them to breed and encouraging unnatural behaviours. By desensitising them to humans it makes them more likely to feel less threatened by us. A small baby left in a pram in a back garden is very vulnerable. I would not leave one there with a dog either but at least with a dog I have the choice not to do that.

I enjoy wildlife and am a huge animal lover and believe you need to have respect for their natural instincts.

My friend's adult chocolate lab dog was attacked by a dog fox one morning - unfortunately he was pushed over, down a slope and impaled himself on some spikes so was lucky to survive.

Foxes jump astonishingly high - I struggle to see how a garden could realistically be really fox-proof.