The back garden is 12ft wide and 30ft long, maybe a little more. All is laid to brick and the fencing on three sides is of overlapped vertical planking. To the left and right are neighbouring gardens, the one on the right being terribly overgrown with a rotary drier dwarfed by leggy shrubs. Running behind all three plots is the wall of a rehearsal room and theatre warehouse and there is a small gap, a foot or so wide, between fence and wall that is choked with the roots of a virginia creeper and with fallen and dead foliage from a badly clipped leylandii rooted in the corner of the garden to the left.
It is from this gap that the fabulous Mr Fox comes to call. He is seldom seen during business hours but has been spotted from time to time at dusk and is to be overheard clattering the fencing, digging in the galvanised steel planters, scuffling at the french window to the downstairs bedroom. He had great sport with a pair of old sandals left on the step, dragging one away and cavorting with it among the pots at the far end and, a couple of nights later, being bold enough to come back for the other, which he stowed under the trailing ivy on the left-hand fence. But he has manners, too, and is timid. He has poked his nose only once through the open door, fleeing when he saw a person. He has also come up the steel steps to the balcony to sit on an old wicker chair but didn't stay long.
I rather like and admire Mr Fox and wonder how he might be made more amenable to human contact. He is long and skinny and most often has his back turned, a great sweep of marmalade fur with a patch of black just where his voluminous brush erupts. He seems in pretty good shape though appeared earlier in the year to have a spot of mange. It has gone now.
The present advice is that urban foxes should not be offered dog food or kitchen scraps because they are perfectly capable of finding sufficient to eat. Maybe I shall leave the sandals outside again so he knows he is among friends.
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Christmas visiting arrangements with The B and L settled yesterday. A great relief.
5 comments:
Good news the gals are sorted. Christmas is enough work without negotiations.
Glad to hear you enjoyed Bond! The G is begging to see it again. I'm not sure I'm up for twice but we'll see...
Dammit, I hate when I respond to the wrong post.
I loved the Mr Fox bit, you captured him perfectly.
A plethora of comments - seems as if wildlife blogging is the way foward.
I have to confess, it was the nice short paragraphs two posts in a row that drew me in...and what's with the moderation?
I think food is the right answer, most red blooded mammals have the same instincts, it always works with men, anyway. Why not try beetroot rissoto?
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