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]

Lamping with dogs is illegal, I believe, under the new hunting with dogs legislation (though I think that covers hunting with more than 2 dogs, so possibly you can still do it with only 2? Don't know, but I do know a lot of lurchers are coming into rescue at the moment because of that restriction.)

Lamping with guns is not illegal, unless you do it to a protected species. I dug out that story about the guy who shot his stepson:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/Story/0,2763,1536746,00.html

makes it fairly clear that it is legal, if not exactly safe!

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

That article does refer to an "illegal expedition", too.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the details of the Yorkshire one, as it's not local, but I assume they were lamping after deer, or in a nature reserve or something like that.

It gets mentioned in our local news (which is mostly very pro-hunting) fairly often, as a legal but dangerous alternative to fox-hunting with hounds.