Posted By Foxy Lady on July 8, 2010
I’ve held off commenting on this documentary for a few days to give it a little time to settle in my mind.
This was shown on More4 this past Sunday night (4th July). I’m told it’s a re-editing of an older programme, though I have not seen the original — it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if this were the case since the footage relating to the recent case of a fox allegedly attacking children was minimal, to say the least.
It seemed to me to be a fairly balanced depiction of people’s views about the urban fox (people feeding them, people keeping chickens who were having issues, and so on). If you appreciate foxes or are generally opposed to the wanton killing of animals, I suggest skipping the last ten minutes or so (spoiler: Chicken Guy finds that hiring people to get rid of the foxes he thinks are killing his chickens completely fails to help)
On the positive(-ish) side, it did spur me on to send some money to the National Fox Welfare Society. The foxes here are healthy (as far as I’m aware) but not all are so lucky.
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Posted By Foxy Lady on July 8, 2010
My cats have figured out the gentle art of teamwork when dealing with the foxes. As the cubs are roaming around a bit more, it’s not unusual to see one cub on its own coming out to look for some food. Yesterday evening, one of them was pottering around on the lawn, initially keeping a respectful distance from Lardy Cat. As sometimes happens, the cub decided to push its luck a little, and attempted to sneak round behind Lardy Cat. Unfortunately, Cub hadn’t noticed Small Cat lurking in the longer grass, and got a smack on the nose for its trouble, followed by both cats chasing Cub across the garden into the bushes. (Don’t worry, Cub came back out as soon as the cats had returned to their watch stations.)
If cats could high-five…
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Tags: Behaviour, Talk
Posted By Foxy Lady on July 4, 2010
(I warn you that you may not wish to read this while eating. ;))
(more…)
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 29, 2010
I’ve recently been reading The Dog Zombie‘s blog — she’s studying to be a vet with a specialism in dog behaviour (and doing a MSc on the side). She’s made a couple of posts recently which might be of interest.
One is about how to greet a dog, and how dogs are likely to react if treated inappropriately, e.g. by children. The other discusses why getting a domesticated fox for a pet would be a really bad plan (even if they were available in the UK, which as far as I’m aware they are not — thankfully)
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 27, 2010
Points to take away from these photos (from June 8th):
- I do wonder how noisy some of these cub wrestling matches/play fights are… I’m always behind the window so I don’t really hear them;
- Mrs Fox is still happy to let the cubs use her as a pillow occasionally;
- Foxes seem to flop down flat with their back legs sticking out — do dogs do the same? (I have never had a dog so haven’t noticed. Cats tend to stretch their legs out sideways…)
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 26, 2010
Today I have another couple of high-definition videos for you (I haven’t forgotten Foxcam, I promise — but I have a huge backlog to look through).
The first is the cubs wrestling with one another again — well, two of them are wrestling and the third one just wants his or her dinner!
In the second video, Mrs Fox, who has been patient with the cubs using her as a climbing frame, assault course, food supply and the like for so long, finally starts to lose her patience with the little darlings. This isn’t a regular thing by any means, but I think it serves to remind the cubs that sooner or later they are going to have to move out (or accept Mrs Fox’s dominance).
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 24, 2010
I have, today, a FIERCE fox cub for you — at least in the first of these pictures. I’m not sure what he was being fierce at, but it’s a fair bet it was one of his siblings… or possibly the grass… or something that existed only in his imagination! Also in this set: more fox tongue, and the cub sneaking off to his den with something, we know not what…
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 23, 2010
As the fox cubs have grown up, I’ve started to notice black marks on their tails, about a quarter to a third of the way down from the root of the tail. At first I wondered if they’d rubbed against something dirty, but then when I saw that all the cubs had it, I wondered if it might be something genetic. (You can’t really tell whether Mrs Fox has the same mark; her tail is a lot more variegated in colour, with white, black and red all featuring.)
As it happens it is something genetic, but only in the sense that most foxes have this; the increasingly-useful Urban Foxes book tells me that it shows the location of a scent gland on the tail, with which the foxes mark their territory. Now you know!
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 18, 2010
The evening of 24th May was sunny at Fox Towers, and the foxes themselves were making the most of it. There was the usual complement of rolling around and gnawing on one another (from the cubs) and watching with faint bemusement (the vixen). Mrs Fox also made another attempt on the world record for How Much Cheese Can A Fox Fit In Its Mouth…
As ever, click on any photo to enlarge, click on it again to close it down.
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Posted By Foxy Lady on June 17, 2010
Although the cubs have been entirely capable of eating solid food for quite a while now, and indeed of choosing their own food from what’s put out for them to eat… or play with… sometimes, only the Milk Bank of Mum will do. Apparently fox cubs may still suckle up to twelve or fourteen weeks of age (so says Stephen Harris’s Urban Foxes book, which I am currently reading). Given that I saw the first cub above ground on 14th April, I suppose ours are now somewhere around the three month mark…
Doesn’t the vixen look long-suffering? I can’t imagine feeding rambunctious cubs with, by now, plenty of pointy teeth can be much fun.
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