 |
|
FOXES IN THE GARDEN
Last week's mention of raw eggs and sausages turning up in compost brought a flood of letters and emails along with an excellent photograph:
From Helen Cooper: I have an allotment and several times I have dug up whole eggs and once a fresh sausage. I thought at first someone had thrown them over their garden fence but they were quite deep in the soil so I concluded they were left by
foxes or squirels for later. Good to know someone else has experienced this!
From Maria Cox: We live in Nottingham and have a large garden full of fox trails. The fox dig holes (night after night) and frequently bury hens' eggs (unbroken), children rubber toys (filched from neighbouring gardens) and sometimes plastic bags containing food, eg raw beefburgers which no doubt they have filched from the bins of some fast food outlet. The foxes are so used to the suburbs that they appear any time of day, as well as at dusk and in the night. The digging etc. takes place at night and they regularly redig where I have filled in the holes.
From Lesley Webb: In July I was digging up a dead Datura in a patio pot, at the bottom of the pot was a whole undamaged hens egg! Later I watched a fox about to bury another egg in a different pot, I scared him away & he dropped the egg. As far as I know hens are not kept any where in the vicinity, we live in a built up area of Birmingham!
From Diane Hall: I have experienced foxes coming into my garden to bury eggs on several occasions. Thank you for your great programme.
From Rosemary Freeman: I live on the outskirts of Fareham,
Hants, surrounded mainly by other houses. I've frequently found whole, unbroken eggs buried in my garden as well as in containers. I suspect either squirrels or foxes - probably the latter - but where do these culprits obtain the eggs in the first place? Nobody to my knowledge keeps hens anywhere near, and Asda is about a mile away!
From Colin Ryall: I was amazed to hear the panel suggest squirrels and hoaxes! This is typical behaviour of a fox. I regularly find whole raw eggs buried around my allotment and also a fresh pork chops, perfect hamburger baps and a hedgehog skin!
From Colin Gray: Our fox comes regularly for food the cat leaves. We have also left him date-expired eggs and chicken carcasses. I have watched him gently pick up a digestive biscuit, unbroken, carry it over to my shrub border and bury it between the Zinnias. So careful is he that the biscuit is still intact when he returns for it.
|
|
|
| SEARCH: use the box at the top right to search GQT |
|
|
Photograph by Alex Watson ©
for Kent & Sussex Today magazine
"With great dexterity he would take the egg without cracking the shell then quickly make off"
Alex Watson spent 60 hours before he managed to capture this shot of a fox in his garden.
|
|
|
|
|
|
