Reading this thread and the diversity of opinions I was thinking people's experience of foxes must be so very different. But then I remembered our neighbour a few doors down hand feeds foxes, so must be encountering the same ones as me. So it must be down to personal choice. They look cute but they stink.
From my perspective it's the sheer number of foxes here that's the main problem. If it were the occasional one or two and the occasional shit in the garden, I don't think I'd mind. Instead we have the following:
We cannot go into our front or back garden without carefully checking where we step.
We frequently have to clean up sloppy fox shit from our deck and garden furniture. This stuff is not possible to clean up from our lawn. It is incredibly stinky and sticky. They spray it round to mark their territory. Their piss stinks too.
In the mornings, and then from dusk onwards we often see foxes in our garden. Sometimes several. In the summer they sleep on our lawn. They chew and destroy our plants and possessions. We've had to replace a garden fence as it simply buckled under the weight of large foxes scrambling over it several times a day.
They are not scared of us. If we go near them they do not move away.
We have not had a single apple from our apple tree since it was planted 10 years ago. Foxes have had all of them.
They leave rubbish in our back garden. This can range from half a pigeon, a takeaway food container with chips spread around, Strangers' shoes, clothing, children's toys.
They are incredibly incredibly noisy, it is not unusual to have upwards of 10 foxes outside the front of our house. There is a public bin a few doors up, and it is a fox hang out zone. They extract the rubbish and leave it strewn in the road. They fight noisily over it.
On either side our neighbours have dogs who bark noisily when the foxes are outside.
We had a lovely nest of birds in a small in our garden. While we were sitting on our deck, a fox came into the garden, reached up and knocked the nest down. It ran off with a chick in its mouth.
It's fucking terrifying when you're having your breakfast in your kitchen and there's a couple of large foxes sitting at your garden door staring at you through the glass!
Tbh if they didn't shit everywhere I could put up with the rest.
Nothing seems to deter them.