They chewed a sofa, slept in the bed and dug up the garden. Was there any way to outfox them?
My battle with foxes began two years ago. You might not think of the north London neighbourhood of Tottenham as a place very red in tooth and claw. But there are otters in the river Lea (although I've never see one) and herons and woodpeckers on the marshes.
Foxes, too – five living in the area immediately behind my house.
In the past few years the last two places that I've lived also had foxes. But nowhere near as bad as this.
The first intimation of a problem was an incursion through the cat flap while we were away for a weekend's rock climbing. The fox that moved in chewed off the corner of the sofa before defecating on it; it knocked down bikes and surfboards, slept in the bed after burying a shoe under a pillow as a toy and chewed through the power cables of the washing machine and fridge, suggesting a cub that was teething.
Later, when the washing machine cable had been replaced, but the conservatory was under two inches of water, it transpired that it had gnawed holes in the waste water pipe as well.
It seemed almost funny at the time. This year it stopped being funny.
Living in north London you get used to the periodic disturbances of sleep by the fox population in the midst of the two activities that seem to occupy their nights: fighting and breeding.
Periodic because – as I now know from obsessive reading about fox behaviour – when the cubs grow they usually disperse.
This year, however, the foxes stayed, digging up vegetables and geraniums in the window boxes they could reach, and squealing their way through the night-time gardens with a noise like a kitten being run over by a combine harvester.
I would see them at night too, usually a shadow behind the curtains, backlit by the street-lamps, prowling the ground-floor window sills.
One morning I came down to find seven shoes ranging in size from that of a toddler to an adult trainer sitting in the middle of the lawn, none of them a pair. The final straw, however, was not the noise or damage, or evidence of a kleptomaniac vulpine shoe fetishist – itwas catching my terrier playing with an adolescent fox in the garden.
You learn things in the course of the conflict with the foxes. You can't shoot or poison them, though I've no desire to go that far. Indeed efforts to use lethal methods to control fox populations in the postwar decades up to the 1980s had little discernible impact.
Bone meal or blood-based fertilisers in your flower beds are also a bad idea. Commercially available fox deterrent powders don't seem to work. Online, on gardening forums mainly, you'll find suggestions. Spreading coffee grounds is one. I had no luck with that. Tiger or lion excrement is also mentioned, although you're unlikely to find that at B&Q.
More prosaically, male urine – specifically the first pee of the day – is supposed to work. One of my neighbours swears by it. The theory is that because foxes are territorial animals that mark the boundaries of their areas, they are put off by the strange smell. But after a couple of mornings piddling in a plastic watering can, it struck me as both ineffective and a bit humiliating.
Part of the problem, so another theory goes, is that urban foxes are now so used to human scent that it doesn't serve as a deterrent. I tried blocking the holes chewed and dug through the mesh fences, but for every hole I fixed another would appear.
A few weeks ago my neighbour broached the possibility of contacting the RSPCA or the council to trap and move our problem foxes.
As the Fox Project, a charity, points out: "Foxes are not and never have been classified as vermin, so local authorities have no legal obligation to act against them. They are also well aware there is little point. Private 'pest controllers' who offer such a service omit to inform you there is no such thing as a vacant territory. Remove one fox and another will take over the territory within weeks."The reality is that urban foxes are a relatively new phenomenon. For reasons that are still not clear they started moving into Britain's cities from the countryside in the 1940s beginning with Bristol and London, a process of colonisation that is still continuing.
Indeed, according to the Fox Website, populations are now "generally higher in urban areas than rural areas".
What appears not to be true is the perception of an increase in fox numbers in the cities over the years. Instead the opposite has been true. The fox-borne disease sarcoptic mange devastated Britain's fox population in the 1990s with urban foxes, living closer together, dying in large numbers.
In the end the solutions that I found, if a bit time-consuming to install, appear to have worked – for now.
The foxes have been scared away from the windowsills and planters with strips of prickly plastic buried just below the surface which is uncomfortable to stand on. The plants in the raised herb garden are planted through wire mesh.
Most effective of all, however, has been the most hi-tech solution – a passive infrared device connected to a garden hose which senses motion, triggering a quick and noisy arc of water towards the intruder.
On the first night I used it I could hear it being triggered six or seven times an hour; after a week it would go off a couple of times a night, suggesting that the foxes have been persuaded to play somewhere else.
