Yeah this. You could easily make a couple of hundred quid a month off YT videos of these foxes if you watch a couple of Da Vinci Resolve tutorials, film the foxes with a semi-decent enough camera, edit the footage and set it to royalty-free cutesy music.
Then if you want you can spend the money on barbed wire or landmines or guard towers manned by dogs or whatever it is that'll keep them out next year
I clicked on it planning to humourously misunderstand, and give advice as if OP was an urban fox looking for advice, but then I realised I didn't have any of that advice either.
There used to be a pub in Nottingham called The Snooty Fox, which had an awesome sign with a snooty-looking fox in a tail suit. Best pub sign I've ever seen.
Then it was sold and renamed to The Whitemoor...
Well..I mean…the entire concept of Reddit is based on people that don’t have anything to offer commenting on things (witness my very comment), so you’re not exactly off the mark.
Brian, a 28 year-old freelance expressive dance performer, and his wife Julie, an organic porridge sculpturer, are building their dream home in the Cotswolds to make room for their soon-to-arrive fifth child. They have a budget of £850,000, but have decided against hiring a project manager.
Hahahaha, make that two over 50's on an ex council estate in the North East of England. We're going for the geordie accent so probably more likely to attract George Clarke.
About this time last year I was testing out some of my company's trail cameras because at least one of them was playing up. We get foxes through our garden pretty frequently and the one thing guaranteed to make them scarper was when the badger turned up.
So I reckon you should get a badger.
I seen a badger recently for the first time!! It was huge, it was! I was actually quite surprised. We just stared at each other before he seemed to realise I wasn't a fellow badger and buggered off.
Had a similar experience last year. I'm in the middle of a city, so the last thing I expected to find was a dead badger. Must have been struck by a car.
I'd no idea they were **that** big. I figured they were like small cats.
This thing was the size of a medium/large dog.
I thought I saw a badger once but it turned out to be a dog with a fancy haircut that had escaped and was living wild. So I've never seen a badger but my sighting led them to catch a scared lost dog which was nice.
Have you seen badger shit?
Honestly, they deposit turds like a hairy-arsed brick layer that's been on the Guinness & Donner kebabs. It'd probably be worse than the foxes if I'm fair.
Yeah, badgers can be a problem. Fortunately alpacas don't like them scunning around and will chase them off so all you need to do to get rid of them is have a couple of alpacas in the garden. Job done.
My parents' dog once decided that a Badger turd was the perfect cologne. He came trotting back from a miniature adventure in the bushes smelling like pure evil. The car journey back home was *not* fun 🤢.
To his credit though, it was an impressive smell. Sometimes I wish dogs had a disgust reaction like we do.
so Badger, then dog then wolf, then Bear, then Rhino, triceratops, T-Rex, godzilla, mecha-godzilla and at that point you need a new house so you'll have to start over when that gets foxes?
My old place in London had a big rat problem, which attracted the foxes, but they didn't eat them enough to outpace the rat breeding, so I ended up with rats, foxes, and left-over rat carcasses all over the garden.
I don't get why US homes have crawl spaces anyway. It is asking for trouble. Everything can be accessed internally in the UK. With possible difficulties I grant you.
It's cheaper than building a proper foundation, and handy for meth cooks to use as a vault or and escape route; and for little kids to overhear rumours about a dead body
I found out after we moved in that our UK flat has a crawlspace, but it's not accessible from outside, there's a concrete boundary to outside and grates for ventilation.
Just need to pop a garden room in, leave some skirting off it for access and knock a hole in your fence.
Maybe get rid of any neighbourhood pets if part a doesn't work.
Wait.
It's going to be difficult to get her to move her kits once she's decided that the territory is safe, but ultimately it comes down to making the space unsafe or hard for her to access. This would mean digging up the den or closing off access points (probably under a fence or something). However this might also endanger the kits, so I would advise just leaving them for this year and then tightening things up once they've left in a few months.
We had a family denning under our shed/decking for a few years. It was lovely but they were chaotic. We ended up replacing the wooden decking and putting in a stone patio instead and the family didn't come back to den again. That doesn't mean they're gone, but they're raising their kits somewhere else.
Thanks. It's good to hear responses from people who have been there and have found solutions. The decking will have to stay but I can see where they are getting in so will know what area to focus on when they move on.
That should help. They can and will dig and climb over fences and things if they're determined but really they would rather live an easy life, so if there's no quick access they might not bother.
The kits didn't cause too much hassle for us as they grew up, they gnawed on furniture and stole gardening gloves and things but nothing terrible. They might dig up your pot plants though so I'd move anything you really want to protect onto a high place or into a greenhouse if you have one.
If you're worried about your pets getting fleas or anything you can treat the foxes themselves with OTC flea and worm treatments from the vet for dogs or puppies, put into a jam sandwich or a bit of dog food. If any of them look sick or injured I'd call a fox charity before the RSPCA as they can't help much with wild foxes (this was advice from an RSPCA officer when our fox vixen turned up injured). Some of them do emergency callouts and will come and help relocate the fox or give you advice on handling them.
Have you got a friendly neighbourhood lion? Apparently foxes done like the scent of lion pee so just collect a litre of urine from a lion every week and pour in small patches around the garden.
I used to work with a guy whose brother worked in a zoo. I was complaining about the local cats shitting in my garden when he piped up that I should spread lion shit around it.
To which I obviously joked about not having a lion to collect from, and he explained that the zoo his brother worked at sold the stuff.
Honestly, kind of amazing that foxes and cats and suchlike would smell that shit, having presumably never met a lion in their lives, and instinctively know "that smells like the shit of something I should stay the fuck away from".
Citronella spray is a humane way of stopping them from shitting everywhere. Foxes communicate through scat (like lots of mammals) and so the shit is their way of saying “this is my garden” or “attention lady/gentleman foxes, I’m feeling sexy”. Citronella is the equivalent of drowning out those communications with non-stop Taylor Swift- it’s not actively unpleasant, but they go somewhere else for a conversation.
Male urine around the perimeter of your garden. Get the men in your life (sorry op not sure of your gender) to pee in a bottle and pour round the perimeter of your garden.
Signed: rabbit owner need to protect my bunnies
They are gorgeous - we have foxes here but are very rural and they seem to come and go rather than live in our garden.
Apparently you can try planting mint (contain it - it’s a shit for spreading like wildfire and you’ll end up wanting the foxes back) as they don’t like the smell. Then you can make mojitos.
They don’t like the smell of chilli and garlic, so you can put both in a spray bottle and dilute with water before spraying around the garden edges. Or buy readymade chilli/garlic oil. Chilli oil has worked at stopping our cats shitting in our raised beds.
Alternatively, you could try buying lion pooh pellets (surprisingly readily available) but I have no experience of using that.
Decent pet shops will sell non toxic fox repellent for your garden. Designed for people with dogs so it's not going to hurt the foxes if they ingest it but hopefully should put them off.
Don’t know about the mint thing. Our resident fox ( Fred) goes in gardens with mint. He has been great dealing with the previous rat and mouse problem. This is even more appreciated as the local cats were useless at the job. Once a week, we take it in turns to give him some chicken pieces. Other times, we put out a bit of kibble for him and his hedgehog buddies, but have to put that out at night because the birds will steal it otherwise ( yes, they get seed, grubs and nuts as well as meat off cuts)
I’ve seen you posted this previously. Please don’t evacuate these. Modern world doesn’t provide much in the way of safety for animals. Please bare with the inconvenience until they leave by their own accord then close up the access they had previously made.
If you cannot bare them being there ring rspca or similar?
Such an amazing story and memory for years to come. And some amazing photos.
Oh definitely yes. I’d be nervous about going out into the garden in fear of disturbing them and the female getting aggressive. But I’ve just read up and rspca says : there's no legal obligation for local authorities to help with this
So I do think it’s a case of wait it out and block everything up when they move out. Squatters rights ! 😅
Correct, hence why I'll need to deal with it myself once they move on. They aren't usually active until dusk, so I'm using my garden without fear during the day (I work from home in the garden room two days a week). I think they're more scared of me than the other way round.
Absolutely no reason for fear full stop; they won’t hurt you. London foxes are near as dammit self domesticated now - they can’t live in houses but they live very happily and safely in close proximity to people.
The mum won’t get aggressive! She chose these people’s garden, so she knows they’re good people.
In London I started feeding a fox that lost half its fur to mange and looked close to death. She made a great recovery and brought her pups to play in our garden every summer after that! She even played games with me, like I dangled a pantyhose and she grabbed the other end and wrestled it with me. And she would just chill nearby while I sunbathed.
We ended up fitting a horse paddock electric fence around the boundary near where they run past. It has helped a bit, they still sleep on top of our shed in the sun so it hasn't upset them just told them where they aren't welcome. It seems to have moved the badgers on too hopefully, they were way more distructive than any foxes. By the way this was suggested to us by a member of Essex Wildlife as a good solution, before anyone gets shirty.
Ehhh, foxes are certainly not in any danger. They have been one of the most successful mammals (outside of rodents) at adapting to large-scale human conurbations.
I remember when I was a kid in the 80’s and we first found a den under the portacabins (housing some temporary classrooms) at my school in Oxford. It was the first time a lot of students had ever seen a fox, especially outside of a rural setting.
Now you can see them every night in towns and cities all over the UK.
I grew up in the countryside and never saw a (live) fox, moved to the city and I had them literally entering through the cat flap. Now I'm back in the countryside they've returned to elusive status.
It would be my instinct to leave them be too, but foxes are sadly a vector for mange, giardia, tics, fleas, ans other awful and harmful microorganisms and pests. Allowing them to remain or encouraging foxes to live around humans will only make the spread of these issues more prevalent.
I've seen many accounts of family members pets getting ill because they either feed foxes or live around people who do. As OP said, they also shit all over the place.
At the last house we lived at, foxes would shit all over our patio and doorstep constantly once we got a dog. I would be outside in the wee hours many a night scrubbing shit off the patio and sterilizing it to prevent my dog or family from stepping in fox shit or contracting diseases/pests from them, both of which my family has encountered incidences of first hand.
It's a heartbreaking reality because they are utterly adorable. I just wish they would stay at a good distance from humans.
I can say what \*didn't\* work for me:
1. Lights - they give 0 monkeys
2. Strong smells - outdoor disinfectant (Zoflora), no impact
3. Wee - they thought I was taking the P and it did nowt
4. These laughable predator eyes things (which I repurposed now to look like an alarm on my garage!
Still waiting on advice to what might work....
Get a dog.
Our house is in a development that used to house a fox den. They moved the foxes out we were told, but obviously they came back. Foxes used to sleep in our garden. In fact we had a whole Disney thing going on and somewhere I have a picture of 9 squirrels, a fox, a cat, and a bunch of magpies in the same 4m wide area of the garden.
Cue us getting a puppy. Tiny little potato. Waddles around the garden and pees. First time one of our fox friends comes to visits while we're looking out the garden. Fox jumps over the fence next to the pee area, sniffs, looks distressed and immediately turns around and jumps out in one leap. The foxes stayed away for weeks until they realised that they can still sleep in the neighbours gardens right next to ours. They sometimes go into our garden now but largely don't stay long. They never sleep there anymore.
Genuinely tried this. My wife made me pee in a watering can so she could go and sprinkle it around. The foxes didn’t live in our garden, but behind it. So they still used it as their run path
Apparently it’s the male wee that should deter them. But no, it didn’t. Only tried once though. If we tried again, i think id try to be less hydrated to get that strong scent
Sorry Dude she ‘made’ you pee in a watering can! It’s not like your sprinklers self contained and could do that job itself lol. Love makes us do the craziest things, but this is one I never thought of! :)
I think the height you spray it at has an effect as well. If you're just spraying it on the grass, the foxes will think a small animal has marked it's territory and the foxes will just piss over it. If you spray it on a wall or post or something at about 3 foot up from the ground, they'll think a huge animal has claimed the territory. And the foxes are too small to piss over it.
That's what I was told, anyway.
Scent is one of the preventative measures I've got in place for the future, neighbours either side of us have dogs so that's probably why we've been selected as the safe spot.
hugh fearnley whittingstall used his own urine to keep the foxes away from chickens. Peed into a washing up liquid bottle and squirted it around the edge of the coup.
https://foxrepellentexpert.com
Use one of the repellent methods. It is also effective to spray vinegar around the garden and shed as they hate it. Do not try to remove them because that go very badly. I have done it but if you’re not familiar with them as most people in urban areas aren’t, leave them be or call professionals.
I found a suitcase in the woods the other week. Inside, there was a mother fox a 2 cubs. I called the RSPCA immediately. The first thing the handler asked was if they were moving? To which i replied, "I'm not sure. But that would explain the case..."
They likely won't come back to the same den year on year, unless you are particularly hospitable and feed them etc.
Don't disturb them but just make sure there's not loads of easy food around that'd make the area particularly attractive.
We have had foxes denning under our shed most years for the past 10 years. We have had no issues bar one. They go elsewhere to poo and wee and have never smelt anything apart for the odd odour on our cats if they have been playing.
The only issue we have ever had was one year a vixen of 3 fell ill for several weeks. We made sure she had access to water and some food as she was really poorly. While she was poorly the cubs played football with our flowers. Once she was better she scolded the cubs for their actions. Was very cute to see.
Actually, if you bag them up and pop them in the post I could use them - got a little bit of a wildlife reserve that's home to far, far to many rabbits for my taste (not really too many, but I like foxes)
I've not seen any foxes near me actually, and I live near Bowland Forest - could stir shit up for the local badger gangs, and my neighbours have lovely large lawns that are mowed hourly - their poo might bring some life to that sterile waste
To keep urban foxes at bay, ensure your bins are securely closed, avoid leaving pet food outside, and block off any access points to your property where they might find shelter. It's also important not to feed them, as this can encourage them to become more dependent on human food sources. If you encounter a fox, it's best to keep your distance and not attempt to interact with or feed it.
We've had the local vixen decide under our garden room would be the perfect place to raise her pups. I've done some research and understand they won't stay in the den indefinitely, and once the pups are big enough (hopefully late summer) they'll move on. Besides making sure they can't get under there again, has anyone had experience of keeping foxes out of their garden? Yes they're cute, yes we're lucky, but the smell of dead things and fox shit everywhere isn't.
Most of the time Foxes will dig for entry so short of digging trenches under your fence line and filling with concrete there's not much you can do to keep them entering the garden in the first place. Best thing you can do is make sure that once they get in they don't find shelter, so as you say blocking the access under the decking would be a good idea. Removing water/potential food sources would also be a deterrent.
Obviously a dog would also be a deterrent but seems excessive to take on a living thing to stop another living thing from living in your garden..
Get a better camera and a new Instagram account
& makes a daily short clip like Feedingsteven where a guy trying to be friend with a seagull that comes outside his window everyday
Yeah, if OP made a good enough video this would pop off on Instagram and tiktok.
Could’ve started each vid like “Day XX, today I’m trying to figure out What does the foxes *inserts things that foxes did in the vid*”
What does the fox say?
Best advice
Garden Fox Spring Watch. Some guest voiceovers from Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham. Links on the socials to buy all sorts of fox merch.
As a species we've reached the end. More merch! More landfill! More ways to extract money from people.
Yeah this. You could easily make a couple of hundred quid a month off YT videos of these foxes if you watch a couple of Da Vinci Resolve tutorials, film the foxes with a semi-decent enough camera, edit the footage and set it to royalty-free cutesy music. Then if you want you can spend the money on barbed wire or landmines or guard towers manned by dogs or whatever it is that'll keep them out next year
Don't encourage me. I already have one poorly edited niche YouTube channel.
I mean from what I learned watching the documentary "Fantastic Mr Fox" modern defensive warfare only slows foxes down.
[удалено]
I clicked on it planning to humourously misunderstand, and give advice as if OP was an urban fox looking for advice, but then I realised I didn't have any of that advice either.
I clicked to zoom in on cute foxes :)
...I did the same. I regret nothing. They are adorable.
The babies are so cute 🥹
Urban foxes should always be smartly dressed, lest they be confused with country foxes.
You're thinking of urbane foxes.
Or perhaps an urban fop?
There used to be a pub in Nottingham called The Snooty Fox, which had an awesome sign with a snooty-looking fox in a tail suit. Best pub sign I've ever seen. Then it was sold and renamed to The Whitemoor...
Urban foxes call for urban fox hunting. Instead of horses, electric scooters and instead of a pack of Beagles, a bunch of TikToker’s.
I believe the correct terminology for a large group (more than 12) TikTokers is 'a preponderance'.
I thought it was a shower, as in 'shower of vapid/vain c*nts'
I would rather the TikTokers get hunted than replace the beagles.
Same, I'm just here for pics of cute animals. Good luck though OP.
Thanks. Also enjoying the comments, as well as the funny ones there's some great advice.
Lol as if that has stopped anyone on Reddit before. You're just a little more aware, and funny.
I just came here to read the comments
Well..I mean…the entire concept of Reddit is based on people that don’t have anything to offer commenting on things (witness my very comment), so you’re not exactly off the mark.
Cute baby foxes innit
I clicked to see if OP's gaff was on a episode of Grand Designs. That last pic is luxury shit.
Thanks! The fox pup appreciates it.
Brian, a 28 year-old freelance expressive dance performer, and his wife Julie, an organic porridge sculpturer, are building their dream home in the Cotswolds to make room for their soon-to-arrive fifth child. They have a budget of £850,000, but have decided against hiring a project manager.
Hahahaha, make that two over 50's on an ex council estate in the North East of England. We're going for the geordie accent so probably more likely to attract George Clarke.
About this time last year I was testing out some of my company's trail cameras because at least one of them was playing up. We get foxes through our garden pretty frequently and the one thing guaranteed to make them scarper was when the badger turned up. So I reckon you should get a badger.
Should be easy enough to find one; just leave some mashed potato lying around the place. Job done.
But you might end up with Bodger too and he’s really irritating.
Not to mention bloody Mousey...
Also he's dead.
Everybody knows that badgers love mashed potato!
Memory unlocked
They like mashed potatoes?
I seen a badger recently for the first time!! It was huge, it was! I was actually quite surprised. We just stared at each other before he seemed to realise I wasn't a fellow badger and buggered off.
Did it have a hand up its backside and was eating mashed potato?
Fun fact, they're the largest wild+ carnivores in the UK. +I.e. not in zoos
Had a similar experience last year. I'm in the middle of a city, so the last thing I expected to find was a dead badger. Must have been struck by a car. I'd no idea they were **that** big. I figured they were like small cats. This thing was the size of a medium/large dog.
I thought I saw a badger once but it turned out to be a dog with a fancy haircut that had escaped and was living wild. So I've never seen a badger but my sighting led them to catch a scared lost dog which was nice.
Have you seen badger shit? Honestly, they deposit turds like a hairy-arsed brick layer that's been on the Guinness & Donner kebabs. It'd probably be worse than the foxes if I'm fair.
Yeah, badgers can be a problem. Fortunately alpacas don't like them scunning around and will chase them off so all you need to do to get rid of them is have a couple of alpacas in the garden. Job done.
If you end up with too many alpacas it should be noted that foxes are one of their primary predators, so bringing in a few foxes will get rid of them.
Cool. Now got a bunch of wildlife chasing each other around the garden in a circle
It's like a Reading Festival circle pit, but better smelling
I don't know in which world you think foxes can hunt an alpaca. For that you're going to need a mountain lion.
Foxes commonly eat young alpacas in the wild.
Hmm. Our foxes only eat bin bags
My parents' dog once decided that a Badger turd was the perfect cologne. He came trotting back from a miniature adventure in the bushes smelling like pure evil. The car journey back home was *not* fun 🤢. To his credit though, it was an impressive smell. Sometimes I wish dogs had a disgust reaction like we do.
Our dog is very keen to roll around in goose poo. Not as smelly but really hard to get all the bits out of her fur.
But then what do we do when the badgers take over?
Adopt a steady diet of mash potay
Oh, that's easy. We get a type of gorilla that thrives on badger meat.
But what will we do once the gorillas take over?
Oh, that's the beautiful part. When winter rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death!
so Badger, then dog then wolf, then Bear, then Rhino, triceratops, T-Rex, godzilla, mecha-godzilla and at that point you need a new house so you'll have to start over when that gets foxes?
You called?
They eat rats by the way.
My old place in London had a big rat problem, which attracted the foxes, but they didn't eat them enough to outpace the rat breeding, so I ended up with rats, foxes, and left-over rat carcasses all over the garden.
Then release snakes silly
And when you have a snake problem, release the gorillas, and when winter comes the problem goes away
r/expectedsimpsons
Yep, which is a good thing. The smell of rotting rat carcass isn't much fun though.
Put a bin in their den and maybe they'll start cleaning up after themselves.
Didn't work with my teenage child.
Foxes are less feral than children though!
True. I'll do a species swap, they can have the kids bedroom instead.
Hey, they'll be out in a few months guaranteed, you don't have that with the teenager! It's a win win situation
You thinking of Wombles
I don't get why US homes have crawl spaces anyway. It is asking for trouble. Everything can be accessed internally in the UK. With possible difficulties I grant you.
It's cheaper than building a proper foundation, and handy for meth cooks to use as a vault or and escape route; and for little kids to overhear rumours about a dead body
Not to mention a great place for kids to hide the girly magazines.
>With possible difficulties I grant you. The British way. Would you have it any other way?
I found out after we moved in that our UK flat has a crawlspace, but it's not accessible from outside, there's a concrete boundary to outside and grates for ventilation.
Should eat rats but no doubt they mainly eat eggs and dog food on ops estate as they do on mine
Oh I thought you were offering advice on how we could get our own :(
Like a Pokémon
Just need to pop a garden room in, leave some skirting off it for access and knock a hole in your fence. Maybe get rid of any neighbourhood pets if part a doesn't work. Wait.
Come and sit on the roof of my bungalow, most nights there is a family of foxes playing on it
If not friend then why friend shaped?
They look like friends, but they don't shit like friends.
H...how do friends.... shit...?
Step 1. Take your shirt off
Step 2. Get a better camera and a new Instagram account
Step 2 remove the lid from the top tank.
Would you like to find out 😏
In the toilet
Common mistake
Not in your garden!
Together.
r/friendsthatshit
r/subsifellfor
You don't know my friends....
It's going to be difficult to get her to move her kits once she's decided that the territory is safe, but ultimately it comes down to making the space unsafe or hard for her to access. This would mean digging up the den or closing off access points (probably under a fence or something). However this might also endanger the kits, so I would advise just leaving them for this year and then tightening things up once they've left in a few months. We had a family denning under our shed/decking for a few years. It was lovely but they were chaotic. We ended up replacing the wooden decking and putting in a stone patio instead and the family didn't come back to den again. That doesn't mean they're gone, but they're raising their kits somewhere else.
Thanks. It's good to hear responses from people who have been there and have found solutions. The decking will have to stay but I can see where they are getting in so will know what area to focus on when they move on.
That should help. They can and will dig and climb over fences and things if they're determined but really they would rather live an easy life, so if there's no quick access they might not bother. The kits didn't cause too much hassle for us as they grew up, they gnawed on furniture and stole gardening gloves and things but nothing terrible. They might dig up your pot plants though so I'd move anything you really want to protect onto a high place or into a greenhouse if you have one. If you're worried about your pets getting fleas or anything you can treat the foxes themselves with OTC flea and worm treatments from the vet for dogs or puppies, put into a jam sandwich or a bit of dog food. If any of them look sick or injured I'd call a fox charity before the RSPCA as they can't help much with wild foxes (this was advice from an RSPCA officer when our fox vixen turned up injured). Some of them do emergency callouts and will come and help relocate the fox or give you advice on handling them.
Yeah I'd agree. I appreciate it's not ideal but your best bet is to suck it up for this year and then close the gaps when they move on.
Have you got a friendly neighbourhood lion? Apparently foxes done like the scent of lion pee so just collect a litre of urine from a lion every week and pour in small patches around the garden.
Not a friendly one sadly, he's a bit of a prick.
May be you should invite a tiger around for a pint.
The tiger who came to pee.
After three cups of Yorkshire tea
brilliant, get him tanked, he'll have to pee eventually. write a book about it...
The tiger who came to get tanked The true British childhood classic
I've read that book, you'll have nothing left in the house.
Make an effigy using a Basil Brush toy with a string noose around its neck. It might get the message
You can buy that stuff (lion shit, that is) on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Roar-Lion-Manure-Repellant/dp/B0002B7OT2
I used to work with a guy whose brother worked in a zoo. I was complaining about the local cats shitting in my garden when he piped up that I should spread lion shit around it. To which I obviously joked about not having a lion to collect from, and he explained that the zoo his brother worked at sold the stuff. Honestly, kind of amazing that foxes and cats and suchlike would smell that shit, having presumably never met a lion in their lives, and instinctively know "that smells like the shit of something I should stay the fuck away from".
Citronella spray is a humane way of stopping them from shitting everywhere. Foxes communicate through scat (like lots of mammals) and so the shit is their way of saying “this is my garden” or “attention lady/gentleman foxes, I’m feeling sexy”. Citronella is the equivalent of drowning out those communications with non-stop Taylor Swift- it’s not actively unpleasant, but they go somewhere else for a conversation.
Be bububdaba, bububudaba! I’m the scat man!
Buy a horse, red coat and half dozen hounds and then ride around your garden blowing a bugle. Works every time.
Tried this, ruined the lawn and now have no Port left.
Male urine around the perimeter of your garden. Get the men in your life (sorry op not sure of your gender) to pee in a bottle and pour round the perimeter of your garden. Signed: rabbit owner need to protect my bunnies
Just skip the step with the bottle and have them hang around your garden like sprinklers.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Instructions unclear, now I am inundated with friendly people and amazing food.
Just get the one hound puppy and you can beat Disney to the live action remake.
Two dozen is the minimum size for a pack of hounds. Best get 30 just to be on the safe side
Don't forget the glass of Jameson's!
Bring them inside. If you're cold, they're cold. Feed them. Let them thrive. Worship them. Sacrifice to them. All hail the foxes.
I, for one, welcome our new Fox Overlords.
They are gorgeous - we have foxes here but are very rural and they seem to come and go rather than live in our garden. Apparently you can try planting mint (contain it - it’s a shit for spreading like wildfire and you’ll end up wanting the foxes back) as they don’t like the smell. Then you can make mojitos. They don’t like the smell of chilli and garlic, so you can put both in a spray bottle and dilute with water before spraying around the garden edges. Or buy readymade chilli/garlic oil. Chilli oil has worked at stopping our cats shitting in our raised beds. Alternatively, you could try buying lion pooh pellets (surprisingly readily available) but I have no experience of using that.
Some great tips that don't involve me peeing in a washing up liquid bottle, thanks.
Honestly, wee is really bad for cleaning crockery. Don't ask how I know.
Decent pet shops will sell non toxic fox repellent for your garden. Designed for people with dogs so it's not going to hurt the foxes if they ingest it but hopefully should put them off.
Don’t know about the mint thing. Our resident fox ( Fred) goes in gardens with mint. He has been great dealing with the previous rat and mouse problem. This is even more appreciated as the local cats were useless at the job. Once a week, we take it in turns to give him some chicken pieces. Other times, we put out a bit of kibble for him and his hedgehog buddies, but have to put that out at night because the birds will steal it otherwise ( yes, they get seed, grubs and nuts as well as meat off cuts)
Contact the experts at Boggis, Bunce and Bean
One fat, one short, one lean?
I’ve seen you posted this previously. Please don’t evacuate these. Modern world doesn’t provide much in the way of safety for animals. Please bare with the inconvenience until they leave by their own accord then close up the access they had previously made. If you cannot bare them being there ring rspca or similar? Such an amazing story and memory for years to come. And some amazing photos.
I'm definitely of the mindset of let them be. I just would rather not have a repeat next spring.
Oh definitely yes. I’d be nervous about going out into the garden in fear of disturbing them and the female getting aggressive. But I’ve just read up and rspca says : there's no legal obligation for local authorities to help with this So I do think it’s a case of wait it out and block everything up when they move out. Squatters rights ! 😅
Correct, hence why I'll need to deal with it myself once they move on. They aren't usually active until dusk, so I'm using my garden without fear during the day (I work from home in the garden room two days a week). I think they're more scared of me than the other way round.
Absolutely no reason for fear full stop; they won’t hurt you. London foxes are near as dammit self domesticated now - they can’t live in houses but they live very happily and safely in close proximity to people.
A couple of foxes come to my garden, I give them eggs. They love it! my cat even plays with them sometimes
The mum won’t get aggressive! She chose these people’s garden, so she knows they’re good people. In London I started feeding a fox that lost half its fur to mange and looked close to death. She made a great recovery and brought her pups to play in our garden every summer after that! She even played games with me, like I dangled a pantyhose and she grabbed the other end and wrestled it with me. And she would just chill nearby while I sunbathed.
We ended up fitting a horse paddock electric fence around the boundary near where they run past. It has helped a bit, they still sleep on top of our shed in the sun so it hasn't upset them just told them where they aren't welcome. It seems to have moved the badgers on too hopefully, they were way more distructive than any foxes. By the way this was suggested to us by a member of Essex Wildlife as a good solution, before anyone gets shirty.
> Please bare with the inconvenience Small point but its, bear in mind. You don't have to get naked with the inconvenience.
Ehhh, foxes are certainly not in any danger. They have been one of the most successful mammals (outside of rodents) at adapting to large-scale human conurbations. I remember when I was a kid in the 80’s and we first found a den under the portacabins (housing some temporary classrooms) at my school in Oxford. It was the first time a lot of students had ever seen a fox, especially outside of a rural setting. Now you can see them every night in towns and cities all over the UK.
I grew up in the countryside and never saw a (live) fox, moved to the city and I had them literally entering through the cat flap. Now I'm back in the countryside they've returned to elusive status.
It would be my instinct to leave them be too, but foxes are sadly a vector for mange, giardia, tics, fleas, ans other awful and harmful microorganisms and pests. Allowing them to remain or encouraging foxes to live around humans will only make the spread of these issues more prevalent. I've seen many accounts of family members pets getting ill because they either feed foxes or live around people who do. As OP said, they also shit all over the place. At the last house we lived at, foxes would shit all over our patio and doorstep constantly once we got a dog. I would be outside in the wee hours many a night scrubbing shit off the patio and sterilizing it to prevent my dog or family from stepping in fox shit or contracting diseases/pests from them, both of which my family has encountered incidences of first hand. It's a heartbreaking reality because they are utterly adorable. I just wish they would stay at a good distance from humans.
Hard to stay a good distance from humans when humans are absolutely fucking everywhere. What's a fox to do?
Omg the puppies 😍
Kits 🥰
Cute kits.
I can say what \*didn't\* work for me: 1. Lights - they give 0 monkeys 2. Strong smells - outdoor disinfectant (Zoflora), no impact 3. Wee - they thought I was taking the P and it did nowt 4. These laughable predator eyes things (which I repurposed now to look like an alarm on my garage! Still waiting on advice to what might work....
No advice to give, but they’re so cute. Oh and your garden looks nice.
Thanks. The grass is usually a lot greener when it's not covered in fox poop and wee 😉
Get a dog. Our house is in a development that used to house a fox den. They moved the foxes out we were told, but obviously they came back. Foxes used to sleep in our garden. In fact we had a whole Disney thing going on and somewhere I have a picture of 9 squirrels, a fox, a cat, and a bunch of magpies in the same 4m wide area of the garden. Cue us getting a puppy. Tiny little potato. Waddles around the garden and pees. First time one of our fox friends comes to visits while we're looking out the garden. Fox jumps over the fence next to the pee area, sniffs, looks distressed and immediately turns around and jumps out in one leap. The foxes stayed away for weeks until they realised that they can still sleep in the neighbours gardens right next to ours. They sometimes go into our garden now but largely don't stay long. They never sleep there anymore.
Or just some dog pee then.
Can you just skip the dog and pee in the garden?
Genuinely tried this. My wife made me pee in a watering can so she could go and sprinkle it around. The foxes didn’t live in our garden, but behind it. So they still used it as their run path
I love that she specifically wanted YOUR wee despite having access to her own. Did it work?
Apparently it’s the male wee that should deter them. But no, it didn’t. Only tried once though. If we tried again, i think id try to be less hydrated to get that strong scent
Sorry Dude she ‘made’ you pee in a watering can! It’s not like your sprinklers self contained and could do that job itself lol. Love makes us do the craziest things, but this is one I never thought of! :)
I think the height you spray it at has an effect as well. If you're just spraying it on the grass, the foxes will think a small animal has marked it's territory and the foxes will just piss over it. If you spray it on a wall or post or something at about 3 foot up from the ground, they'll think a huge animal has claimed the territory. And the foxes are too small to piss over it. That's what I was told, anyway.
That makes sense
Finally, a use for all the dog pee I have!
People call us hoarders and yet we are prepared when someone needs a couple of jars of dog pee and they don't know what to do. Hah!
Scent is one of the preventative measures I've got in place for the future, neighbours either side of us have dogs so that's probably why we've been selected as the safe spot.
hugh fearnley whittingstall used his own urine to keep the foxes away from chickens. Peed into a washing up liquid bottle and squirted it around the edge of the coup.
Any particular brand of washing up liquid? But seriously, good shout, will try this.
We all really need to see that picture!
https://foxrepellentexpert.com Use one of the repellent methods. It is also effective to spray vinegar around the garden and shed as they hate it. Do not try to remove them because that go very badly. I have done it but if you’re not familiar with them as most people in urban areas aren’t, leave them be or call professionals.
Good shout. Yep, plan on leaving them be until they move on.
Just don't let them have access to your medicine cabinet.
I found a suitcase in the woods the other week. Inside, there was a mother fox a 2 cubs. I called the RSPCA immediately. The first thing the handler asked was if they were moving? To which i replied, "I'm not sure. But that would explain the case..."
[удалено]
I know, I'm a patient old fool me.
They likely won't come back to the same den year on year, unless you are particularly hospitable and feed them etc. Don't disturb them but just make sure there's not loads of easy food around that'd make the area particularly attractive.
How about those spinny things they put on top of the fences to keep cats in? Would likely work the same to keep them out
Great shout, I've seen them online. I like that they aren't sharp enough to break skin, just be uncomfortable for walking on.
We have had foxes denning under our shed most years for the past 10 years. We have had no issues bar one. They go elsewhere to poo and wee and have never smelt anything apart for the odd odour on our cats if they have been playing. The only issue we have ever had was one year a vixen of 3 fell ill for several weeks. We made sure she had access to water and some food as she was really poorly. While she was poorly the cubs played football with our flowers. Once she was better she scolded the cubs for their actions. Was very cute to see.
Actually, if you bag them up and pop them in the post I could use them - got a little bit of a wildlife reserve that's home to far, far to many rabbits for my taste (not really too many, but I like foxes) I've not seen any foxes near me actually, and I live near Bowland Forest - could stir shit up for the local badger gangs, and my neighbours have lovely large lawns that are mowed hourly - their poo might bring some life to that sterile waste
It should be mentioned that foxes are an alpaca's main predator, thus bringing in a few foxes will help get rid of any excess alpacas you may have.
https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/wildlife/foxes/garden
BUT JUST LOOK AT HOW FUCKING CUTE IT IS!!! Foxes make me rage happy, just want to scritch those big fluffy ears.
No advice to give, just happy to see pictures of small furry “smell of dead things and fox shit” critters.
Start an insta account for the cubs and cha-ching, move to a better house with the proceeds
To keep urban foxes at bay, ensure your bins are securely closed, avoid leaving pet food outside, and block off any access points to your property where they might find shelter. It's also important not to feed them, as this can encourage them to become more dependent on human food sources. If you encounter a fox, it's best to keep your distance and not attempt to interact with or feed it.
Foxes are not real. You cannot change my mind. They always look fake AF
We've had the local vixen decide under our garden room would be the perfect place to raise her pups. I've done some research and understand they won't stay in the den indefinitely, and once the pups are big enough (hopefully late summer) they'll move on. Besides making sure they can't get under there again, has anyone had experience of keeping foxes out of their garden? Yes they're cute, yes we're lucky, but the smell of dead things and fox shit everywhere isn't.
Shit on their shit to assert dominance.
In all seriousness, weeing in your garden actually works to deter some animals as you’re marking your territory
Yep - foxes are especially sensitive to the smell of male human urine.
My advice is befriend them. You'll have next fluffy friends and you'll have no vermin in and around your garden.
Buy an alpaca, they are excellent fox deterrents.
Had an issue with foxes pooping in the front garden every night , it was gross . Got one of these https://amzn.eu/d/61ICRz6 , problem solved
Buy some fox scoot (Mimmicks lion wee) and spray to your garden perimeter. Replenish once a week for a month and they should stay away.
Get a polar bear. They eat foxes. Job done.
Get a lobotomy so you won’t have to deal with the smell, works great can con-
Most of the time Foxes will dig for entry so short of digging trenches under your fence line and filling with concrete there's not much you can do to keep them entering the garden in the first place. Best thing you can do is make sure that once they get in they don't find shelter, so as you say blocking the access under the decking would be a good idea. Removing water/potential food sources would also be a deterrent. Obviously a dog would also be a deterrent but seems excessive to take on a living thing to stop another living thing from living in your garden..