I hate foxes

[Faciadipasta]

Honestly I HATE them. I mean I know they look sort of nice but they are just awful. I've taken to trying to shoot them with a super soaker like a crazy woman not that it makes any bloody difference.
They scream all night, that horrible noise that sounds like someone being murdered. They have figured out how to get into our 'fox proof' food waste bins so we often go out to see manky bits of food strewn around. And if we manage to keep ours somewhere they can't get to it then a neighbour will have probably forgotten so it will still be up the pavement. We had to stop using the milkman because they figured out how to knock the milk bottles over so the foil lid would be dislodged and then milk would go everywhere and stink, and they'd probably only lick a little bit of it and just leave the rest in a big smelly puddle, they terrorise my poor cat, they dig my grass and they like to mark their territory with diarrhoea. Leaving little pools of it on our stuff. There's a load which has gone partly on the wall, then run down it and pooled at the bottom this morning. Ugh. Any ideas how I can get the little fuckers to bugger off? We've tried those noise things now and they make no difference.
There is a massive problem in this area. If you remember the news story where a fox went into a house and killed a baby a few years back that wasn't far from here...
Help!

Why would you hate such beautiful creatures? Just fox proof your bins properly. Have a metal container your milk man to put the milk in.

We have several cats in our communal garden. The foxes never both the cats and vice versa.

People need to remember that it isn't just us who live on this planet. We share it with some amazing creatures and they deserve to live on it as much as we do. Even if it upsets you with your first world problems such as milk not being able to delivered!

Just go online find some animal friendly deterrent (one that doesn't kill or maim any pets or wildlife) and put it in your garden.

Why do they shit ON things? That's what I don't understand. It's gross enough when they shit on the lawn or flower beds but they seem to actually choose to shit on stuff. The other day it was a brush from a dustpan and brush set that I keep outside, before that it was on my kids football, they've done it in DHs shoes (fair enough he was an idiot to leave them outside), often it will be on the lid of our paper recycling box. Ugh. Horrible little gits.

Bother*

In our garden and they sometimes play chase. They do poo and dig up my partners precious lawn but tbh the cats pooing in the flowers bothers me more.

I have heard that you don't fuck with a badger though. They can be nasty bastards.

We have a badger that visits occasionally. I quite like him though. I was excited to find you get them in the city!

@Suzi888 they are more than welcome to sunbathe in my garden. Obviously id quite like them too if thats all they did. Im not an animal hater! It's all the bloody unsociable stuff they do that I hate.

If you remember the news story where a fox went into a house and killed a baby a few years back that wasn't far from here...

Have you more details of this? The last I heard was that it is an urban myth.

The noise they make is them talking to each other. No worse (and not as loud) than a barking dog to my ears.
Ive seen my cat squaring up to one in the garden and it just legged it. Come to think of it we have had much less fox action in the garden since we got cats.

It's territorial to make anything new or different inside their territory smell like them, as a means to deter rival foxes.

Why do they shit ON things? That's what I don't understand. It's gross enough when they shit on the lawn or flower beds but they seem to actually choose to shit on stuff. The other day it was a brush from a dustpan and brush set that I keep outside, before that it was on my kids football, they've done it in DHs shoes (fair enough he was an idiot to leave them outside), often it will be on the lid of our paper recycling box. Ugh. Horrible little gits.

you know they’re not doing that to piss you off right? I hate when humans label certain animals as ‘evil’ or ‘horrible’ when they display certain behaviours that we find unpleasant. They are just doing what they are supposed to do. We are the vermin.

Foxes are beautiful wild animals and I don't hate them. I do however hate my neighbour who feeds them every evening. They walk through our garden to get to next door, poo everywhere (it's always loose or I would poo scoop it), screech like hell and drive my dog barmy. They are not scared of dogs, humans or anything as far as I can tell

@Faciadipasta Well I’m astounded. Wonder why they would cause havoc in one area and not another. I would definitely fox proof my garden, I couldn’t cope with poo all over the place- never seen anything like that!

I’d love a badger! Considering we live on the edge of a wood we don’t seem to get that much wildlife, maybe I should be careful what I wish for! Unless my dog puts them all off. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I'll never not be thrilled to see a fox, and always enjoy the call of wildlife including their yelps and the sound of screech owls. They're also effective controllers of rats and mice (the fox, as well as the owl!) which are their primary diet.

I can see how they could become a nuisance in urban environments, albeit this isn't helped by some misguided humans thinking it a good idea to feed them (or failing to secure their rubbish, which is tantamount to the same thing). Nature should be left to itself and not interfered with. In fact, it's humanity's interference which has depleted their natural habitat and contributed to their migration into towns in the first place.

Or bring back hunting.

@saveforthat our foxes did a bunk when my dog growled at them - he wasn’t even close to them. But it’s the only time I’ve ever seen him show aggression. Some fixes must be more brazen I guess, perhaps the urban ones are more comfortable with humans and dogs.

Hunting is still de facto legal, as shown in video footage from many saboteur groups. The hunters are also unaccountably violent, not only to the saboteurs, but to their own horses as shown in footage uploaded onto Twitter at the time.

I can't imagine it's that effective a controller of numbers, but it certainly causes gratuitous suffering. If anything, there should be an effective ban rather than the botched lip service shoved through by the Blair government.

Oh yes. Let’s chase the animal till it drops of
exhaustion and then be ripped to pieces by dogs.

What fun.

No. Fox hunting is cruel and barbaric

Wow , what a horrible thread

You have no idea if your cats shit elsewhere if you let them roam. None at all. I have cats. They shit in their litter tray but they also go out. I'm not stupid enough to think they don't also shit in people's gardens

Jesus Christ

I was ambivalent until they killed my sweet gentle chickens. Not just one, but the whole lot. That's what they do.

Now I'm a hater.

So many people say they do this for fun. They really really don’t.

They have a larder which they keep stocked for when food is short.

They will kill all the chickens and then come back and take each one to the larder. They won’t come back if you interrupt them

The fox found in the house with the baby didn't kill it! That's just an urban myth/scaremongering. Given how many humans and foxes there are in this country, living together cheek by jowl, they must be one of the least likely native species to attack us. They're nothing to be scared of.

Yes, this is what they do. They are adapted to be able to feed off carrion, so can store meat for a long time and still eat it safely, when it would be putrid enough to make other species ill or kill them.

They intend to eat all the chickens they kill, but are often interrupted before they can remove all the chickens to take away and store.

Over a BILLION chickens are killed in the UK each year for human consumption. So we're not in a place to play holier than thou with foxes over it.

You do realise that humans kill sweet gentle chickens too?

I LOVE foxes & all wildlife.