To poison these bloody foxes??

[curiousgeorgie]

Everyday I wake up to rubbish all over my garden and driveway... Foxes shit on my decking and today my doormat!!!

The whole place stinks and it's getting ridiculous. They live in the bit behind my garden because our back neighbours have fenced off the weeds at the back of theirs...

My next door neighbours feed them. 3 times a day from a plate on their decking. Whole loaves of bread and pieces of meat and blocks of cheese...

I just want to get rid of them. Day one when we saw four baby foxes running around our garden we thought it was lovely, but now it's totally ridiculous. I have a 1 year old and a 3 year old and every morning I have to go out and clean and hose before my daughter can go out.

It must be okay to poison them or something right??

We have got foxes at the end of our garden, I have to make sure our rabbits are firmly secured but apart from that they are no trouble apart from the crying all night at times They never poo in our garden and its the seagulls that drop rubbish everywhere !
I wouldn't dream of harming them in any way, I rather like them actually.

Even if it wasn't illegal, it would be cruel to poison them.

I realise you don't actually plan to do that now.

Could you call the RSPCA? They might have suggestions about how to keep them at bay and have solutions that would be safe for your dog. I don't know much about the nature of foxes, but maybe the RSPCA would be able to relocate them or something?

I also think you should go to your neighbours and tell them how much this is affecting you. It would be cruel to do the foxes any harm but there is nothing wrong with not encouraging them into the gardens.

Lala - we do clean our rubbish. We do secure our bins. I have spoken to the neighbour.

I don't need to 'give myself a shake'. It's ridiculous. There's foxes mess all over my decking and on my doormat. My daughter wants to play outside and has no freedom to just do so because its so bloody disgusting and unhygienic.

I would absolutely poison them if it wasn't illegal (which I didn't know, I thought they were vermin.)

curious you've complained about your neighbours and the foxes before and nothing's changed.

Give thought to moving if it's as bad as you say, if the council don't care and won't help and you're not going to kill them what are your options?

I feel your pain OP, unpopular though it is.

We have foxes and I worry constantly that they will try and get tiny ds2. They've had one of our chickens in the last two weeks. They are mangy and flea ridden.

But there is nothing we can do, so we are super vigilant with the kids and try t make our garden as fox unfriendly as possible.

firstly, OP, I hope you do not allow your children to play outside without an adult. Urban foxes can be very brave - my friend had one come in her garden and take a pet rabbit from the run right under the kids noses

I do not understand people who wilfully encourage them to come by feeding them up close to their houses. And that includes my own mother.

DH cousin lives (in Alaska) where bears in the garden are quite common - they have VERY strict rules about keeping bins in your garage and only putting them out just before collection. I think people who encourage foxes are antisocial, it IS a very real nuisance, and councils should actively discourage people from feeding them.

curious what will you do if you kill the foxes and then a neighbours cats decide to use your garden to do their business? Will you kill them too?

You sound incredibly entitled and precious.

You.Cannot.Control.Everything.

I suspect there is something else making you feel unhappy and desperate and the fox issue is just the outlet.

I hope you find peace soon.

I think it is disgusting that you would poison them.

It is cruel and evil to cause harm to an animal who is only living through instinct and is encouraged by your neighbour feeding them. The foxes don't know they are causing you any harm where you would deliberately do so to them.

You really need to take this up with your neighbour or an authority that can offer a humane solution before you end up murdering a whole family who have done nothing intentionally wrong.

Hampton - you're wrong. Nothing else is making me unhappy, it's just the foxes. They are a fucking nuisance.

would something like silent roar deter foxes - it's meant for cats but may be worth a try?
maybe someone needs to develop similar based on wolfy smells to keep the foxes away!

"I would absolutely poison them if it wasn't illegal"

You sound lovely, curiousgeorgie.

I feel the same about certain people. Consider yourself lucky, eh?

Put your bins in the shed/garage.

Any poison put down could also affect domesticated animals such as cats.

You need to accept that your house and garden are not hermetically sealed bacteria free zones or you'll end up carrying alcohol sanitising gels everywhere.

If you have decking rats are common, the foxes will keep rats down.

It's just fox poo, they don't have access to a wc, where do you think people used to poo before plumbing in this country? Where do you think people poo in countries with rudimentary sanitation?.

Btw, you and your house are covered in fecal bacteria. Riddled with it, and fungi and yeasts.

Your bin can't be that secure if the foxes are getting in to them every night, get a more secure bin and they shouldn't be able to get in to it.

I am astounded that you have a dog and yet you have foxes that choose to eat someone else's rubbish (bringing it to your house) and then shit where they have eaten...very strange foxes that, they normally shit away from a food source. Even more astounded that this is a daily occurrence.

BTW decking is a magnet for rats and their waste is more dangerous to your kids.

some practical advice here

The most effective approach to reducing foxes’ presence in your garden is to remove what is attracting them there in the first place. Your garden may be attractive to foxes because of the availability of food, because its environment offers good cover, because it contains a good den site or because it is on a territory boundary. These basic tips will help to make your garden less interesting

• Remove food put out for pets or other wildlife

• Ensure outdoor pets such as rabbits and chickens are housed securely and shut away at night

• Do your composting in a secure compost bin
• Clear away windfall fruit
• Place all refuse in wheely bins
• Tidy up any overgrown areas
• Avoid the use of bone meal as a fertiliser – to a fox this just smells like cached food
• Ensure that structures such as sheds, garages, greenhouses and coal bunkers are secure and foxes cannot dig underneath them. It is estimated that as many as 75% of fox dens in urban areas are beneath sheds
• Block access to your pond with netting or plants to prevent the foxes using it as a water source

If this is insufficient to solve your issue then you can look at actively deterring the fox from your garden. This can be done by upsetting the fox using sight, sound or smell.

• Install commercially available devices which flash red LED lights when activated by movement
• Install a motion activated security light so the fox feels more exposed in your garden
• Utilise a sonic deterrent device which emits a noise at a frequency inaudible to humans but which foxes find irritating
• Use chemical deterrents such as Scoot – these are designed to disrupt the foxes’ efforts to scent mark the area making them believe the territory is taken and encouraging them to move on. These products are especially useful where fouling by foxes is your main concern and when applied directly to the fox’s scat. Only use products licensed for this purpose otherwise you will be breaking the law.

There are a growing number of humane pest control companies as well as other sources of advice – see Recommended Links below for more.

Thanks so much for that post, I'll go through the list and see what I can do in my garden. We do have a compost heap at the back and they do lay all over it so ill talk to DH about getting rid of it.

Eve - I know about the decking (plus spiders which I am so phobic about!) but it came with the house and it's not something we can replace / remove

OP, I can't believe what a flaming you are getting TBH. I assume most of the posters have no experience of how utterly awful it can be having your lives blighted by urban foxes. Can they imagine a neighbours dogs getting in and crapping all over their garden and the kids outdoor toys? Every day?

I for one took your OP as a cry for help and NOT an actual threat to poison them, more a 'what can I do' plea. You wanted sympathy and helpful suggestions, you got little of either.

Try talking to your neighbours again - they may just not have thought about the effects on someone with little kids to think about. Plant something prickly or put up barbed wire and then another fence to reinforce your boundaries. Look into other means of deterring them (noises/smells?)

You have my total sympathy.

No doubt some of these posters would also tell me not to poison rats in my garden which are a massive problem thanks to one completely overgrown garden full of rubbish nearby. OK so that's not illegal, but I am murdering poor ickle creatures.

OP, speak to the council, they might be able to have a word with your neighbour. Persevere, you will eventually find someone who recognises feeding foxes as the problem it is, probably in the 'pest control' department. Urban foxes are recognised by some councils as pests.

try 'catscat' or something similar (it smells strongly of garlic), we put this at the point of garden entry every day for 2 weeks and our visiting fox took another route, never to return.

curious I have deleted your PM unopened as I do not engage in PM on mumsnet. No direct offence to you.

I genuinely meant what I said about you finding peace though.

Eve yes! My aunt had to move from a house after she spent a fortune on decking a huge part of her back garden and it just got totally infested with rats. The council gave up after three attempts as they said the rats would just keep coming back and it's too easy for them to eat into it to make a nice living space.

My PM was just assuring you that the thread wasn't a wind up, as you suspected.

OK I have had a bad experience with PM recently

Whilst this is being resolved, and I really hope it does get sorted, would it help you to name them yourselves? To say, "Oh No! Frank has done a huge dump on the doorstep again! Felicity has left a chicken carcass on the doorstep! Nice, thanks Felicity!"

If you really cannot control it and it's driving you batty, sometimes a sense of humour is your only protection.

Yes I do have experience with urban foxes, they are everywhere here, I've still never thought about poisoning them.

Use tall heavy plastic bins with big heavy lids. That works for me, the foxes can't get in to them.

I so want to find out if the weeing works. I have sympathy with the OP, if I has a one year I wouldn't like it one jot.