To ask my neighbour to stop feeding to fucking foxes!

[Foxthefoxoff]

This is my first post so bare with me. Firstly I will say that I am a animal lover and vegetarian but any advice on Fox extermination or neighbour elimination will be greatly appreciated.

We live in a small cul de sac of 8 houses. One neighbour has been feeding foxes for years. We are now overrun with fat spoilt foxes that sleep in the road and barely move for cars. I have counted eight in the garden this morning. The smell is foul, they steal washing, we can't have any children's toys outside or garden furniture as they piss, shit and chew to death anything left out.

This is bad enough, but my main concern is that stupid fucking neighbour is feeding them raw chicken that they are bringing into my garden, happily dripping blood all over the patio. This morning I come down to two foxes on back step playing with raw chicken with all its lovely campylobacter, salmonella or god knows what else. DS is 21 months old I am scared to let him play in the garden for fear he becomes ill. They are so over fed they are playing with food rather than eating it. I have spoken to council who say they can't do anything.

I am at my wits end, any ideas? Wise MN'ers

This thread is a healthy antidote to these threads featuring posters who actively feed foxes in their garden. Please don't feed foxes.

We had a similar problem with neighbours feeding pigeons. Result noisy, crap covered yard & pigeons trying to nest on our windowsills & planters. Council weren't interested in that either.

The rats it attracted on the other hand had the council jump & sort it out pdq.

Ring the councils EHL again & report that teens food left for foxes by your neighbour is being spread around your garden & is now attracting rats & you've seen several, this should get a better result

I agree with a pp - first speak to the neighbour nicely but firmly - explain your problems and tell them they really must stop feeding them.

If they refuse or get arsey, tell them you'll be contacting an exterminator if she doesn't.

And definitely start leaving everything like fox poo/food leavings through her letterbox on her doorstep.

Please don't relocate them to the countryside. They cause no end of problems including biting people.
I'd call environmental health.

Sorry I missed you had called them

How many times did you speak to the council? You may have been fobbed off by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Speak to environmental health directly as they are responsible for neighbour nuisance. If they still don't take you seriously, contact your local councillor to get them to take this up for you.

Good luck.

I blame the use of pictures of 'cute fox cubs' for the ignorance of city dwellers about foxes in general.
I live in the country - foxes are around but they are part of the food chain in that they keep the rabbit population down and will only pursue other prey (lambs, chickens or cats) when there is not enough food or the fox population explodes for some reason.
Do not feed foxes - it is not their normal habitat to be in towns.
They should be treated there as any other kind of vermin not encouraged.

I think you are making the mistake of reporting as a neighbour problem. Your neighbour is causing the problem but what you have is a pest control problem with a habituated wild animal creating an unsafe environment for young children. It needs reporting as these cases end in disaster for the fox and usually a pet animal as well.

What happens when neighbour is on holiday and the foxes are starving? State that their is raw meat being left in your garden and you are concerned about health and safety - not a neighbour dispute.

Urban foxes are extremely determined and will destroy anything and everything

The idea of a tall fence keeping them out is laughable. They tunnel under and will scramble over!

Scoot does bugger all

They dig up everything, chew through anything (we double bungee cord the bins to try and stop them getting in, they chewed through the cords)

They'll jump on the flat roof outside our living room window in broad daylight and peer through the bi folds. Can't leave them open in the summer in case they get in.

Kids next door playing out have foxes jumping right into the garden next to them, in the middle of the day

I found one sauntering down the pavement on my way home from work last night at 7pm. They have no fear.

That's an awful lot of foxes and they sound very tame. You do need to speak to your neighbour.

We have one visiting fox who comes for supper every night at the same time but we don't put raw food out.
It runs off at the slightest sound though and we don't see it at all apart from that.

We set up some relatively inexpensive motion-activated night vision cameras, and saw we had a family of 5 foxes charging round the garden most nights. And quite often a few in the daytime as well. They cause carnage.

I walked home from the night bus in the wee hours of Saturday night / Sunday morning, in less than 10 mins I passed 3 separate foxes (ie not together) mooching around the road / pavement. This is a residential area in central-ish London (zone 1/2 border) - they're bold as brass.

decent 6ft fence and gate should stop them

hahaha, I have seen foxes get over fences that height.

agree with environmental health, also mention unfinished food and rats.

do you have a neighbourhood association? join them and ask for advice, ours was really helpful when neighbours had a similar issue.

I bloody love foxes, but feeding them is really not in their best interests - not least for reasons such as them getting too used to people and cars and thus getting killed on the roads. Can you approach your neighbour from the point of view that she's not helping the foxes? She might be more amenable to that. Surely the council would need to address the raw chicken/health hazard issue too - they sound like they are buck-passing

I was thinking that the foxes would kill any rats, but actually if they’re being fed they probably don’t bother. Have a scout for rat holes under hedges or by drains. I think they’ll be there if there’s food around. And ime they’re craftier than the foxes so you’re unlikely to see them. But saying you’ve seen one/ some should get some action from EH.

New thread :
Keep seeing my neighbour's dh peeing in their garden.
Is he a flasher or is the loo broken?!

I'd put any bits of raw chicken and fox shit through the fox feeders letterbox

I find that e-mailing or writing to the council directly with a list of your EXTREMELY SERIOUS concerns works much better!

Do write to them and use senioritabonita's arguments which are absolutely brilliant + anything relevant pertaining to lack of care by your EH

Yes, and also contact your councillor directly to get their support.

I'm amused at the posters suggesting collecting DH's urine, the OP has already said it's a very large garden and an ongoing problem. How much piss can one man produce?

Thank you everyone - The lady I spoke to at the council was very sympathetic and put me on hold while she spoke to a manager in EH, then came back & reiterated that there was nothing they would do. I will follow the excellent advice of putting concerns in writing and getting photographic evidence, then dropping the rat bomb

Love the advice to put leftovers & poo through her letter box. Wish I had the guts to do that 😂.

I have just spoken to my nice next door neighbour NNDN who I know has recently befriended the fox feeder FF. She clearly doesn't want to get involved and here's where it got a little weird.. she claims that FF only feeds 'Lilly', yes fox has a name . Apparently this fox has saved FF's life as without it she has nothing. I told NNDN about this morning's number of foxes & the raw chicken and she said FF has told her she only feeds the one fox in the evenings. This is a big fat LIE. I was all for the confrontation and threat of extermination but now I don't know what to say to FF as I don't feel I'll get anywhere.

Jeez, can't she just get a cat? Or a budgie?

@Aprilshouldhavebeenmyname 😂😂 yes I am slightly worried that DH might get a reputation as a flasher.

I've learned to @ yay!!

@bonnyshide I know 😂 maybe I could invite all the men in the street round and literally have a pissing contest 😂😂

@bananafish81 agreed they are so determined. Only difference here is I don't need to secure the bins as they're so well fed they don't lower themselves to go through bins.

I can't believe that the council do not see this as a problem???
Just because they are "cute" does not make them any less than a pest than rats.
Can you escalate your complaints to someone higher up the food chain?
Do a sad face story for your local paper?