I didn't know where to put this but it may be interesting.
We've always had foxes visit our garden occasionally, every year, despite us having a six-foot post and panel fence all the way round our back garden, except the bit between the corner of the house and the garage, where it's an eight foot one with a lockable door in it. So quite secure. But this particular fox came every few days at the beginning of 2017. It would stand in the middle of the patio for half a minute or so just staring at us. We realised later that it was looking for a reaction. We never opened the French windows to shoo it away. So it must have decided we weren't a threat. We "christened" it "Fergie."
Taking a drink from our "frog" pond.
It would stay for a while then make its way along the rockery, jump up onto this Japanese lantern, then over the fence. It could get over our neighbour's far side fence which is only 4ft high, or out onto the road down the side of their house
After a week or so, it stopped coming or so we thought and we didn't see it until the April when I saw this from the kitchen window. So we had to change the name to Fiona.
She'd got under our tea-house in the 18" gap between it and the rear fence. There was no "skirt" along the bottom of the back wall I'd left it like that for ventilation, so there was a 9" clearance she could get under and have her den between the supporting brick piers.
There were six cubs!
What amazed me, was in between her disappearing in February and coming out with the cubs, I was in the garden for a few hours every week-end doing "stuff," but at the same time playing my vinyl jukeboxes in the tea-house. They must have liked Motown, cos' I played a lot of it and never heard a peep out of them,.
I took a lot of photos and some videos, on "zoom" but only through the kitchen window or the French windows in the lounge. We didn't go in the garden when they were out. But I did leave a bowl of cat food out every night, as six cubs would have presented her with problems to able to feed them all. Fortunately there was no "runt", They were at first all the same size.
Having five minutes away from the kids in the shade of one of our acer palmatums.
She was an excellent caring mum. They stayed under the tea-house whenever she left the garden and only came out when she let them. She pinched kids' soft toys from other gardens for them to have things with which they could chase each other around.
On one occasion during one of their frantic chases around the koi pool (I temporarily put a taught net over it in cae any fell in) , my wife said, "One of them has got a blackbird in its mouth !" We've always got them in the garden. I explained that it was "just nature" and we had to accept it.
However, the following morning I found the "blackbird" on the lawn.
They didn't do much damage, apart from flattening some bulbs in the end bed and digging a few small holes in the lawn.
They made a bit of a mess of the tea-house veranda, practicing their " pouncing" off it. I had muddy paw prints going progressively higher up the white tea-house doors each week. But how could you not love one of these?
So I gave them a sturdy box to use.
As they got older they got braver and liked to steal the mealworms we left out for the blackbirds. If there were none in the bowl they'd try to attract your attention by looking at you through the window.
They were alway "immaculately presented."
"Excuse me, will it be alright for me to eat these mealworms?"
We worked out there were four males and two females. The males were very competitive with food , but the females "shared.
We had them until late July, then she took them out of the garden two at a time over three nights, she'd previously let them practice jumping up onto the top of the lamp In the first photo So they would eventually be able to follow her that way out of our garden.
The garden recovered after they left and the only evidence of them ever having been there is the big file of photos I've kept.
I made a few videos of them and they're on my YouTube channel.
Not yet able to post YouTube links.
Here's one I took at night and set to music. We've a security light on the back of the shed which they set off. But weren't bothered about it.
Check out
FOX CUBS PLAYING AT NIGHT 3
We didn't see them again. But we got reports of the cubs having occasionally a bit of a dig in a few neighbours' gardens. Although Fiona came back towards the end of last year just once, to check out her old den. (Those are the photos at the head of this thread, but we recognised her and she us)
But after they left, I put a mesh screened wooden frame over the entrance, so she'd have to go elsewhere. Not many neighbours liked it when they found out we had foxes.A lot of rubbish in the press about foxes. But once you've got them, what choice do you have? You aren't going to shoot them are you? They have a tough enough short, life if they survive.
