I read that I was going to be moved, my mascara would run when the pregnant vixen and her partner were ruthlessly baited and shot.
But foxes don't get me that way. I like to see them but I like to keep my distance from them. I don't like them shitting in our garden.
Urban foxes are vermin but they're good looking vermin. But this programme isn't really about the foxes themselves. It's more about their human neighbours' attitudes and reactions to the ginger beasts.
The human characters in this programme include...
1. The spoilers who treat the foxes as pets, feed them and film them.
2. The annoyed but fox-friendly neighbours who are fed up with constant shit in the garden but want the foxes to be taken away to a nice place in the countryside.
3. The concerned people who have an injured fox under their decking.
4. The people who think foxes are their enemies.
Numbers 2 and 3 could be considered pretty normal. Not wanting to harm the creatures but not willing to share their lives with them too closely.
Number 1 are a nutty couple but what's wrong with a bit of nuttiness in this crazy mixed up world?
It's family number 4 which deserves a kick up the arse.
They are trying to be 'green', keeping their free-range hens, producing their own free-range organic eggs.
The hens aren't hidden away in a top security barn, but in full view of any intruders behind some crap chicken wire. And the silly family blame the foxes!
'Green' is the right word for this family. Trying to be partly self-sufficient in Stoke Newington of all places! This is The Idiots Guide To The Good Life.
Daddy buys some new hens from his farmer mate and some lion shit fox-deterrent.
And, surprise surprise, the fox breaks through the crap chicken wire at night and assassinates the whole lot of them. We do not see whether the fox has state of the art wire cutters or whether he just uses his sharp teeth. My money's on the teeth.
The family are distraught and at the end of their tether. The teenage daughter strokes her (presumably bird-loving) cat as she says how much she hates foxes. Daddy says how what the fox did in killing for killing's sake was just so "unnecessary". An Idiots Guide To The Good Life, imposing human morals onto animals.
Daddy is driven to desperate measures. The fox has to die.
Along comes the bald headed assassin with a licence to kill. After a week of enticing the fox and his pregnant partner into the garden with fresh meat, the bald headed assassin sets up shop in Daddy's spare bathroom. Daddy strokes the gun/phallus, wishing he could have a go himself as years ago he'd shot animals in the rainforest. As with Sting, those days in the rainforest were presumably the best of his life.
The fox pair are shot efficiently. Job done, problem solved?
Of course bloody not. It's not long before new foxes are coming into his garden to have a look at his hens. Because contrary to Daddy's logic, killing one or two does not give an example to the remainder of the foxes in the area.
What a shame the foxes can't learn human morals, eh Daddy?
Is postmodernism to blame?
1 day ago
What an awful tale.
ReplyDeleteI typed something thoughtful and sensible.
But, on second thoughts I've deleted it all.
I'm going straight round there to inject arsenic into those 'green' eggs.
I'm with the National Rifle Association. All the foxes should have guns to make it a fair fight.
ReplyDelete*resists temptation to wheel out all his fox puns*
*but only just*
Kaz - I suppose they'd say they were concerned for the hens' welfare as well as contributing to a greener planet. Though I'm sure they could have bought some nice eggs from a farm where the chickens were well looked after.
ReplyDeleteMurph - I know you're on the foxes' side because without them, what would you roll in? We used to go to the Fox & Firkin pub in Lewisham. Their t-shirt said "For Fox sake buy me a Firkin pint." Their strongest beer was Dogbolter, a pint of which would set me up nicely for an afternoon auditing in a freezing cold engineering firm. Christ, I'm sounding like an old beardie. Shoot me now.
Family 4 really wound me up, especially Daughter referring to foxes as 'evil', a ridiculous enough word to apply to humans, and Daddy's logic that the word would get round the fox community not to bother the hens after he got the rotund chap in to blow a couple away. Presumably the foxes in the hood would read it in the Fox Newspaper and declare their garden a no-go area. The Fox Police Commissioner would set up a special unit or forum to investigate why so many tragic gun deaths occurred involving young foxes in that area.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't any Stoke Newington I know, I'll tell you that for nowt.
City foxes are looking more raggedy. It's because they're eating all that crap takeaway food that's been discarded on a Saturday night.
ReplyDeleteMy Word, obviously there aren't enough Blue Blooded Aristocrats about to ensure that these bloody Foxes can die naturally while being torn to shreds by the Royal Beagles.
ReplyDeleteGood Gawd Man! Atleast these godforsaken beasts would die with some dignity still intact!
Bloody Do Gooders!
On a summer's night, I can hear the foxes making whatever noise it is they make vry loudly.
ReplyDeleteViolet - Fox News should be news for foxes. It might be worth watching then.
ReplyDeleteIstvanski - The Stoke Newington foxes were well fed on chicken livers and gateau. Still, their life expectancy was only 18 months.
HE - The country foxes have the life of Riley now. They spend their spare time playing kiss chase.
Billy - There was a good bit in the programme where they describe how the male stays inside the female for hours. This seemed to turn the horrible family's neighbour on - he was saying that we humans could learn a trick or two from the foxes.
Foxes during the mating season - there's no other sound on Earth quite like it. Our regular vulpine visitor has just bolted 3 huge lumps of cheese - I fear for his cholestrol levels.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the real reason they're dying so young is because they eat like rich Edwardians.
ReplyDeleteKeeping a fox as a pet? How utterly unnatural and preposterous!
ReplyDeleteGood, honest, decent folk who vote conservative and pretend to have read books by Stephen Hawking know the right thing to do. Domesticate a wolf, that's what!
Just spend a century selectively inbreeding wolves and they turn small, fluffy and perpetually hungry. Unless that's teenage girls, I forget. But ANYWAY, foxes bad, wolves good.
The dogs around here look like they've been selectively bred to look like their owners.
ReplyDelete