One for the Fox

When I heard the news regarding the Fox attack at the weekend, as sad as this was, I think I was more horrified by the news story itself and the way it was told.  I long ago gave up on expecting news – whether in a paper or on the radio or television – to be objective and truthful, but this was just sensationalised.  The Fox was a bloodthirsty wild animal intent on eating a human, there was no details about the how, why and looking further into it, gave little more information until much later. The other thing that strikes me then and since and something I should be used to by now, is the ignorance and stupidity of my fellow human beings.  Despite the vast source of information available to us in this electronic age, people are becoming more stupid and dumbed down – you just need to look at the type of television we are subjected to to see why.  Some of the statements that have been made such as “They are wild animals they should be all got together - catch them and put them in the wild. Or just get rid of them.”  It’s hard to even know where to begin with that kind of dopy remark! We are the cause of most of these kinds of problems.  One report said that people were leaving rubbish on a nearby green.  As I walked up my own street today, there was rubbish bags left lying around, some broken open.  There is often some form of rubbish left lying around here, whether food waste or an old mattress, TV or sofa.  People don’t take personal responsibility for their own actions, if we didn’t turn our cities into cesspits there would be less opportunities for wild animals. To put things into perspective, Fox attacks of any kind are extremely rare.  Compare that to dog attacks which are pretty much daily and include deaths but you don’t hear anyone waiting to control or cull them.  There are more bites reported by dogs, cats and even humans than Foxes.  What a soft bunch of wimp's have we become in this country.  We have no truly natural dangerous animals, with maybe the exception of the vary rare Adder.  No venomous spiders harmful to humans, no large predators waiting for us in the woods and if you can brave the cold, a swim in the sea is unlikely to be fatal from any kind of attack (more likely from hypothermia).  The Wild Boar has been re-introduced to some areas but there has been an out-cry to that.  One local women didn’t want to let her dog out because of one the growing number of Red Kites might swoop down and take it away!  We’ve just about killed off anything that might threaten or simply annoy us in this country. Although we have urban Foxes around here, I have never seen one, so my only experience are the more ‘wilder’ ones which, at the first sniff of a human, disappear.  So, I’ve put together a few images of my favourite wild, British mammal, the much maligned, Red Fox.