Visitor to the patio!

[bunn]

There is a fox cub sunbathing on my patio, right outside the kitchen door!

It can see me looking at it through the window and it hasn't run away.

Looks like it has mange - it keeps scratching and its back is all manky.



Awwww.

Poor little mite. He has run off now, so he's presumably not quite as ill as I thought when I first saw him. He has done a big poo by the grape vine, so I think he has been eating my grapes, (and possibly nipping in through the cat door for a spot of James Wellbeloved's best as well.)

I have shut the rabbits into their smaller securer pen. They are furious, but it seems like too much of a risk.

I've also sent off for some mange treatment from the National Fox Welfare Society. I know my neighbours have been trying to shoot the foxes, as they have been after their chickens and are distressingly mangey.

I don't think they have had a lot of luck though. If I can treat this little lad for mange I will do: if they later shoot him, too bad, but at least he won't be living in such discomfort. I do hope he will leave my bunnies alone though!

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

He looked a bit small to me to be killing chickens, and trotted right past our rabbit run on the way out. But perhaps his parents have been after the chickens.

It is a bit odd though - when I caught some people lamping in the field over the way they did say that the foxes had had their chickens, but a while back when we had a couple of stray dog attacks on our bunnies, I went over to warn the neighbours and I'm sure they said their coop was dog-proof then. Odd.

**thought** maybe the neighbours I saw lamping were other neighbours? It was as black as the inside of my blackest hat, so I'd not necessarily recognise them. I think of my nearest neighbours as the Chicken People as they own That Bloody Cockerel, but there are other Fowl Folk out there.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

What is "lamping"?

I think foxes also climb better than dogs, based on the behaviour of the urban foxes who live in the (reasonably dog-proof) electricity sub-station.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I just had to google that. I initially assumed it was a typo, though for what? (LARPing? Lambing?) Then I wondered it was some strange Cornish custom. But apparently it's the night-time shooting of foxes and things.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Lamping is where you stand in a field in the dark and make a noise like a dying rabbit. Then someone sweeps a torch round and a man with a gun tries to shoot any suitably eye-like reflections.

Before you say it, yes, people do get killed lamping - there was a case in the paper the other day where the gunman shot dead a child who had strayed away from the party. I'm not exactly enthused about them doing it near my cats either.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

This sounds incredibly... Well, I'm just amazed that they let it happen in this day and age, when pretty much everything else gets regulated against on health and safety grounds. I'd never heard of it before. You learn something new every day...