Stoke Newington, twinned with the Belvoir

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Urban Fox Attack (More4, Sunday) was fun. Well, the event to which it's pegged, the vulpine assault on young twins, obviously wasn't fun at all. But this is more about our relationship with urban foxes ? more specifically middle-class north London's relationship with them. It's complicated. Foxes are cute, and they appear in lots of lovely children's books, such as Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. They are wild animals, and wild animals are a good thing ? green and all that. But then keeping your own organic free-range happy chickens is also a good thing ? green and all that. Trouble is, the foxes keep ripping their heads off. And occasionally ? very occasionally ? they attack small humans.

So, middle-class north London is divided. This family, who own the chickens without the heads, wants the foxes shot. So they call in the fox assassin, who does just that, with his Day-of-the-Jackal rifle, from an upstairs window. The neighbour is not happy about this; he preferred the foxes to the noisy chickens. Someone else likes foxes, but not in his garden; he has them relocated by the fox Relocation Relocation man. And this elderly couple love them so much they have webcams all around their garden and watch the foxes live on the telly, instead of Corrie. They feed them, too, chicken liver, mmm. It's probably a Nigel Slater recipe.

I'd love to know what someone watching in the country makes of all this. Astonishment, I imagine. I reckon they should re-legalise hunting with hounds, but only in cities. That would keep the numbers down, while giving the foxes more of a sporting chance than the Jackal does. And Stoke Newington would get a nice, colourful spectacle on a Sunday afternoon.

Posted By: Old Git, Jul 5, 13:24:41