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!

I wouldn't categorise myself as loving foxes, but I do have empathy for an animal struggling to adapt in an unnatural environment, and feed and raise their offspring, and that includes scavenging rather than being able to provide through hunting alone.

The vitriol, and actual hate for the urban, and even rural fox, I don't understand.

Love them...sorry op!

Trouble is, wildlife does what it can to survive and dosn't exist for our convenience. Don't leave food out and find a deterrant.

Ah well. Imagine if you lived somewhere with wolves or bears roaming around! I saw a video the other day of a town where a rhino goes on parade every night.

With a bit of ingenuity you could keep them out of your milk and bins, OP. Don't be outfoxed by a fox!

I feel like I ought to repeat this so

Complain to the council, they trap lots that are causing a nuisance, they liberate them in the countryside.

@Crazykatie my local council doesn't offer this service. I have just checked their website. It states they do not deal with foxes and it provides a link to a fox protection charity.

I hate them. Im very rural and i keep sheep and in lambing season its evil. We have neighbours who shoot them. I have no issues with that.

I think any pest control company would probably just kill them tbh. I mean I really hate the little buggers but I don't want to kill them. Believe it or not i genuinely do like animals. We dont even eat meat!! I just want them to piss off and leave us alone, or failing that just stop marking our stuff with their diarrhoea. I could probably overlook being woken most nights by their screaming if they could just stop spraying their shit everywhere. But even so I really don't want them killed.

Urban foxes shouldn’t be moved to the countryside. They will be dumped into rural foxes territories and won’t have the natural ability to survive in the countryside. If all they’ve known is scavenging from bins for left over food or are feed by people they won’t know how to hunt for food. Urban foxes dumped relocated to the countryside will have a very short life expectancy!

Hunting doesn't need bringing back, it never went anywhere! The season hasn't started yet though, I think it's next month.

I much prefer the fox that comes into my garden to next door's cat. The fox doesn't shit in the flowerbeds or kill birds and butterflies.

But getting a dog will stop them coming in, I reckon. I never saw a fox in the garden when I had dogs.

Find ways to deal with it like stop leaving shoes outside, that's just laziness

Ishacoco
Or bring back hunting.

Echoing a pp to say that it hasn't gone anywhere. Though I think another pp was talking about hunting for fun, this is a prime example.

I can understand shooting to protect livestock, however, and how it is sometimes necessary.

Absolutely right, @EtonMessy — the idea that dumping urban foxes in rural areas is kind is so wrongheaded. The concentration of foxes this temporarily and artificially produces is appalling for ground nesting birds and other wildlife. They bring disease and parasites to rural foxes. They have none of the canny fear of humans of rural foxes so they poach livestock even in broad daylight, which forces farmers to get the guns out. The urban foxes are quickly dealt with but rural foxes are often killed too. I’ve seen a lot of it round where I grew up and frankly I think countryside and animal rights charities ought to be raising awareness of the cruelty and environmental disorder this supposedly humane practice causes.

Foxes often come a few feet in to peoples houses to steal shoes. A fox stole one of my shoes out of the utility room which was open to the back garden

I think you must live near me. I have neighbours who feed the foxes every day apparently the foxes favourite food is peanut butter and jam sandwiches......

Foxes do not kill for fun.

The blase attitude to hunting on here is quite chilling.

Yanbu op. They are flea fidden vermin in an urban environment and crap all over everything. I doubt the people loving them feel the same way about rats.

OH yes they do ask any chicken farmer, you don’t want a fox in your free range chicken pen

Oh no they bloody don't. For god sake.

They don't @Crazykatie as was explained above. They have a 'larder' for storage for when food is short. They just cannot carry ten chickens at once.

They can't even carry ten slices of apple at once, they come back for each one individually.

For what it’s worth hunting never did anything to control foxes, it was just an excuse to ride across country, the farmers and gamekeepers did/do the fox control.
Im not a hunt supporter but I wouldn’t tolerate a problem fox either.

The attitudes towards wild animals in human spaces (it's actually the other way around really but let's not get into that) applies to all animals. The attitudes on here towards foxes could equally apply to tigers in India, elephants in Kenya, Polar bears in Alaska and Black & Brown bears in Canada & the US, I could go on - there are loads of places native animals are 'hated' by the local communities they have to co-exist with.

All of these beautiful animals are killed because they encroach on human space whilst just living their natural lives.

But I'm guessing fox haters will say 'that's different'. However a subsistence farmer in India or Kenya probably has more justified reason to hate (and kill) animals eating the crops or killing to livestock the family rely upon for food and income. Surely even this thread's fox haters can see they are not being reasonable when it comes down to it.

Oh and I have foxes with London residency in the back garden so I do indeed know what they are like (and the poo does reek). I just choose to see me as the intruder not them.

I hate them too. We had this in our previous home. Piles of sloppy shit in the garden and my puppy used to roll in it. It doesn’t help people feeding them human food.

Believe that if you want, they might take 3 or 4 out of the 20 or 30+ they kill