h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No I'm not talking about slum-dwelling Leicester City fans. I'm talking about Vulpes vulpes who have decided to leave behind being chased by people on horse back with packs of dogs, and have moved to the city.

Since I moved to Brighton almost 10 years ago, I have seen far more foxes wandering around the streets of the city than I ever saw as a kid when I lived in the countryside. I would say that more or less every time that I drive around town in the early hours of the morning I see a fox at some point on my travels.

Last night after driving back from Sheffield I saw one trotting across the roundabout outside of the 24hour Tescos as I went to buy some food and booze at about 2:45am.

Then when I turned the car into my road to park some 45 minutes later, there was another one standing in the road right outside my house! He scarpered quickly as the headlights illuminated him. But once I'd parked the car up, he soon came back to nose around doing what ever he had been doing before I so rudely interrupted him.

It was fascinating, he was totally unafraid of me - I guess urban foxes grow up surrounded by the sight and smell of humans, so they're comfortable up to a point being aorund them. I reckon I got within about two feet of the fox before he gave me a 'what do you want with this bugging me' look, and then trotted off.

So, we've got new neighbours then. And we're going to get the rubbish bins trashed at night by them to go with the damage that the seagulls already do the bags in day-light hours. Heigh-ho...

I refuse to believe anything you say given your little dream jaunt

Yeah surrrre, foxes foxes everywhere. . .

Were any of them driving Peugeots?


az

> "outside of the 24hour Tescos"

Perhaps foxes really like Tescos. I was on my way to Tescos here when I met up with a fox who trotted along beside me. We kept pace, just a few feet from each other, for most of a long road. The fox then crossed to the other side to go down a garden. However, that could, in theory, have been a foxy shortcut to Tescos while I was legally limited to the paved route.

I'm jealous. There are no foxes in my area. There's a very few bobcats and the occasional coyote, but no foxes.

They just couldn't be cuter in my opinion.

Actually this one outside the house was a scrawny looking beastie. His brush was pretty much non existent, so I imagine that that's mange or something else equally unpleasant affecting him.

And to top it all off the dustmen didn't arrive today. So that means that the seagulls have had a field day with the rubbish bags outside the houses, and this fox and his cousins will finish the job off overnight tonight

My fox was in much better condition. Perhaps you should put out better quality rubbish, GD. Ideally you'd medicate them as well, but that could be trickier, eg rigging a spray with an infrared sensor ...

The medication thing could be a bit tricky though. It'd probably end up going all over one of the drunk students who roam up and down my road on their way home and making quite a racket as they do so.

Do any of the students have mange though? If so, you could still claim you were providing a public service. Besides which, what are they doing rooting through your rubbish?! That's unusually poverty stricken even for students.

I couldn't sleep so I got up and got dressed and went for a drive around town half an hour or so. I saw two foxes


Then I saw another fox during the half hour I spent driving around my neighbourhood looking for a sodding parking space

I wonder if I'll ever get the opportunity to start a thread in my journal about urban armadillos...

Foxes were pretty common all over London by the time I left - I even saw them at night in central London while I was driving around delivering magazines. Saw one chasing a cat one night... both animals were shifting I can tell you. Didn't get to see the outcome, if there was one.

So who's this LosMos geezer then? And what have you done with GreyDesk?

'LosMos' is as close as I could get to GreyDesk in Cornish. 'Mos' actually means table, or so I'm led to believe.

Working our way round the world are we then?

>>I couldn't sleep so I got up and got dressed and went for a drive around town half an hour or so. I saw two foxes<<

In some parts of the world you would be described as the spirit of Fox having chosen you, and perhaps be given a new name: Drives with Foxes?

Seriously though, I love encounters with wildlife, even when they drive me crazy (it's rats and possums here, although it tends to be domestic dogs that get the rubbish).

Traveller in Time searching for a neckless
"Last night saw some bats, never known they did live here.

Was the wrong kind of shooting star anyway. "

We get lots of bats in our garden, they zoom about the place at dusk hunting for virgins to bite

They always look quite hungry

in california the available habitat for wild animals has been infringed on by housing to the point they can't avoid coming into contact with civilization at times, and since they can't always stay away from man, what's the use of staying away at all?

paradoxical, but in the countryside where i grew up you had to go out looking for wildlife, and have a sharp eye. now that it's dense suburbs, there are quail in everybody's back yards, as well as deer, king snakes, raccoons, skunks (the smell of roadkill skunk was not uncommon when i was a boy, nowadays it's permanent and omnipresent)...

there are even wild turkeys, which i never realized lived in the area, and most amazing, mountain lions! in a whole childhood of ranging over those hills i'd only seen their tracks. these days they come into your yard! since they have to come for water, why not eat your pets while they're at it?

Today I actually saw a country fox for the first time in ages and ages and ages

I was just past Winchelsea on the A259 on the way back from one of my day-trips to Belgium (well day is overstating it a bit. 20 minutes is more like it) when this fox ran out of a field and into the road. He took one look at me and my bashed up old Peugeot bearing down upon him at some great rate of knots, and turned tail and bolted back into the field.

Sol of this parish has got foxes as well. Ben and I saw one wandering along her road when we were outside her front gate.

Sol lives just round the corner from Clapham Junction...