Kitchen Garden Forum

Foxes are not uncommon in our garden, but they are usually passing through and don't hang about. But last evening a big dog fox, which I've named 'Rupert" (Rupert Murdoch - Fox News ) made himself thoroughly at home.
He wandered across the lawn and curled up on a seedbed in the salad patch, and went to sleep. After about 20 minutes I went out and he let me get within some 10ft before he raised his head, leisurely got to his feet, ambled onto the lawn and sat down. I sat on a garden seat nearby and for some 10 minutes we looked at each other, Rupert behaving like a dog, rolling over, scratching himself and finally laying flat on his tummy and going to sleep. He was there for an hour before proceeding on his way.
Hope the pics transfer OK.
John N

a big dog fox, which I've named 'Rupert" (Rupert Murdoch - Fox News

I can think of many similarities between the fox and Rupert Murdoch..
none of them complimentary to the fox - or to Murdoch for that matter.

Hi John, what an amazing story. The pictures really illustrate it well (though are a little on the big side to fit onto my screen).

By now, I hope you'll be able to tell us whether he's become a regular visitor, or if on the day in question he'd been chased for 20 miles by the local hunt and was just a bit knackered & in need of a lie down

Aww he's great! Hope he comes back to see you

Most exiting thing we have coming to our tiny lawn is two very fat ducks, who come quacking in, hop into our pond and have a good splash & clean before flying off again.
Only Terry (our cat) seems unimpressed.

KGAdmin

Hi all,
Yes, he's been back, but not stayed as long as before. Yesterday afternoon I was fiddling around in the greenhouse and saw him sitting on the lawn. I wondered whether he was thirsty, what with all the dry weather, so I filled a small plastic pot with water and placed it outside the GH. I went back to the house and watched. For several minutes he stared at the pot, then got up, walked over to it, picked it up by the rim, tipped all the water out, carried the pot a few yards away, placed it down - and peed in it!
John N
PS Sorry about the pic size. I reduced the Megapix to about 300kB each, but I don't know how to reduce the dimensions - advice gratefully received. Pix are in iphotos on a Mac.

Hi - If you're using iPhoto choose the EXPORT option on the image to be reduced. You'll see a Size option = you can select a pre-determined size or select custom. It should default to width (the most common way of defining image sizes) - then set it to say 500pixels.

See how that looks. You can choose any size, so useful for exporting to pages like facebook, or on here!

KGAdmin

He's certainly a fine figure of a fox and looks in the pink. Me and The Grockie went up to Otterspool one night, on the banks of the Mersey. We were sitting there, chatting away and then a load of foxes came over and started to help themselves out of the bin. Must have been about 4 of them. We sat there for an hour watching. We were chatting away and the foxes were not in the least bothered by us. It made a fab night even better

Fox News update - 7.20pm Fri.
Rupert sitting on lawn when neighbour's black cat appears and starts searching round the bottom of nearby quince tree, obviously looking for a rodent. Fox watches patiently until suddenly a small rat (or maybe large mouse) appears, running away from the opposite side of the tree.
Fox moves like lightning, grabs the rodent and returns to previous spot. Cat carries on searching, apparently oblivious to the fox sitting with the rodent laid out like a trophy in front of him just a few yards away!
John N

My error with the pic sizes seems to be making this "fox blog" difficult to read, widthwise. Can admin do anything, like chopping pix or even deleting them? John N

Chopped em!
Either do a new post, or edit your original one, attaching the smaller photos.

Morning Peter

I'm trying to find if "chopping" foxes is an official exemption in the Hunting Act 2004.


I must says it seems a very efficient way of despatching the beasts.