Fox Wars

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

Love them... They really are adorable.

..hate them... I will electrify.

I'll put 20,000 volts there, if needs be. I'll fry it.

..cuddle them... Want a little friend? Eh?

They like company.

They know we're helping them.

..kill them...

GUNSHOT

..33,000 urban foxes in Britain.

They're hungry.

They do love a chicken dinner.

Now look at the poor devil.

Just for a fox to have a bit of fun.

Fox haters, huggers and hunters - a nation divided.

BARKING

Every night, as the evening draws down,

a little dance begins in suburban Britain.

Our towns are providing rich pickings

for an ever bolder fox population.

I'll throw it round the lawn a bit cos then they'll stay longer,

as they have to collect it.

Looks like a fox feast.

It is a foxy feast.

There's quite a lot of food going out there, Louise.

Not really. Not for four or five foxes.

Foxes started colonising the newly built suburbs

around our cities in the 1930s.

You can see why.

Others have a very different sort of evening planned.

Tim's been a pest controller for the past 14 years.

That's supposed to be like a rabbit squealing or an animal in distress,

which then makes the fox come in a bit closer.

This one's a bullet that's been adapted to...

make a fox call.

SQUEAKING

An hour later, Louise's house.

(They're on the path!)

Ten o'clock with Tim.

That's a big gun, Tim.

Yes, it's nice and light.

It's a .223 calibre.

SQUEAKING

GUNSHOT

The urban fox ranges far and wide.

He does love to leave his mark.

It's the smell.

Is it bad? Oh, God.

I could ask you to put your nose into my bin there,

but I think it might result in your dinner coming back up.

Oh, it's appalling.

I've never smelt anything like it.

Trying to get into your cat's... My cat flap. Yeah, they broke it.

It's broken the cat flap.

Janet's neighbour Crystal.

Tried to get through the cat flap.

And the next door neighbour as well.

I love my garden because it's my stress outlet.

You know, it's sheer enjoyment to see what I've done over the years.

Opening the front door in the morning and smelling it,

and then having to come down with a shovel, wrapping it up in paper.

How do you think I feel about it?

So, whereabouts does it go?

Well, I can tell you where it shits every day.

As you can see by the state of the grass.

And it's just gone on like this since last August.

I went online and Googled answers,

and I got some wonderful answers from America.

"Get yourself a double-barrel shotgun, honey,

"and blow it to smithereens."

I mean, I will electrify. I'll put 20,000 volts there, if needs be.

I'll fry it.

It's war.

It's a war between the fox and me.

War needs weapons and war needs waiting.

So...

You're going to sit here tonight... Yes. ..with your pole.

With my pole.

And if I can hit it unconscious, I will then put it in a dustbin,

I think, and drive it down to the nearest tip.

This is what it's driven you to. Oh, yes.

At the end of my tether,

and never cross a Welsh woman when she's at the end of her tether.

This is definitely Dad's Army. No guns. A curtain pole.

This is Brookside, suburban north London,

a street in a ferment about foxes.

We can't put poison down, can we? Cos we can't afford to kill cats.

It came in just from next door.

Because we saw them in the winter,

now the kids won't go in the garden on their own.

Yeah. Other people up and down the road say they see them as well.

We used to have our rabbit down on the decking

and then the foxes came.

We're a little bit worried,

thinking the rabbit might have a heart attack or something like that.

Hundreds of foxes have invaded this street over the past few years.

She's standing, shouting, "Fox! Fox!"

In Polish language...

SPEAKS POLISH

This is... The rabbits' grave, where Tommy and JJ are buried.

They managed to get out and the fox got them.

I hate them.

An ever bolder fox population has sparked

newspaper headlines about foxes even coming into people's houses.

Hello, foxy.

I first saw him behind that white bench there.

Not everyone in Brookside is a fox hater.

Three doors away, a man used to...

A man was feeding them.

I think there's a chap down the road that puts out food for them.

He puts out cat food and bits and pieces.

In the middle of Brookside lives Nobby.

He favours a more laissez-faire approach to gardening

and to the animals in his garden.

If you don't like living near a nature reserve,

go and live in a flat. How long have you lived here for?

In New Barnet?

Since 1945.

Do you want to show me where the fox comes from?

I don't know where her den is,

but I'll show you where she comes through.

You've got to do a bit of climbing.

Over there, under that blue thing.

How long has she been coming for?

Five years now.

I just like animals.

You name it, I've had it.

I used to collect butterflies and stuff like that,

and bird's eggs...

All my life, it's all I've done... and work.

I do the lottery occasionally and if I ever won millions,

I'd just buy as much land as I could, put a big fence around it

and turn it into a nature reserve, and keep everybody out.

20 houses downwind of Nobby lives Sofia.

Due to the recent increase in fox numbers,

she's had to take extreme measures in order to protect her hens.

If a fox killed my chickens, I would be absolutely devastated.

I would... I don't know what I'd do.

I'd probably start shooting them myself.

What kind of things have you tried?

So...

I've tried human hair, the barbed wire to stop them jumping on top.

I've got this pack called Fox Solutions and the alarm.

Bit of a random request. My mum went to the hairdressers, like,

"Can I have a bag of hair?"

That is the hair. Let's have a look.

I've wedged it in certain places and foxes have pulled it out.

I think there is something about the smell that,

I don't know whether it angers them, they like it not,

something about the territory.

On the forum, I've heard that a male urinating around the garden

is another really good deterrent,

again, because of the territory thing. Have you tried that?

No. My brother wasn't up for it and my dad was like, "Don't be silly."

Evening brings out Brookside's other population.

Mrs Fox want her dinner? Come on in, girl.

Come on then.

Come and have your din-din. Come on then.

Nice dinner, come on. Come quick.

You must talk to animals, otherwise they don't respond to you.

She's about five years now, that one.

She'll go off and she'll bury it.

There's a lot of people round here saying,

"You and your foxes are making a noise, and they're digging holes

"in my garden and they're doing this",

and I just tell them to go to boil their head. Takes two to tango.

If she wants... If she wants to be friendly...

I'll be friendly. But if she wants to by skittish...

like the one in the front.

Who are we talking about? The foxes or the neighbours?

Oh, the neighbours, I don't give a shit about them.

Foxes can live for up to 14 years,

but most urban foxes live only two years due to traffic accidents.

Give that a bang and that's... Makes him come.

RATTLING

Your attitude to foxes tends to be different

when you find your happiness in rearing livestock.

How long have you been here for?

14 years now.

It's a little bit of heaven.

It's the best bit of heaven.

It's small, it's handy, it's close, and nobody knows it's here.

That's where the fox leaves when he comes visiting.

He didn't take any. He killed 36.

If he was hungry and he killed one, I'd say, "Good luck to you."

But he killed 36 and never took one, so that is just a pure killer.

A flock like this costs around ?300.

It's money which Tony can ill afford.

That's what you see when you come in first thing in the morning.

That's a lovely healthy hen - she's fat.

She was laying every day.

Now look at the poor devil.

Just for a fox to have a bit of fun.

And what do I do with these?

Tell one of these people that love foxes,

tell them put these in the sack now and what do I do with them?

The fox doesn't really just kill for the sake of it.

He'll be back for the chicken carcasses...

and Tony will be waiting.

He'll pay.

It may take time, but he will pay.

There are seven times as many foxes in the countryside

as in urban areas.

Controlling their numbers provides a steady living

for pest controllers like Lee.

I'm coming up.

The world looks a bit different from up here, doesn't it?

I'm in my 17th year now...

in pest control.

So... But I've always been into countryside,

ever since I left school at 16.

You don't need a licence to kill a fox,

but you will need someone with a gun licence to kill it humanely.

With fox control, you are literally just controlling foxes.

You're not out to... You know, make them extinct.

That is not the point of it. It's just about keeping a balance.

I mean, the problem being now, when you're getting into the cities

and that, you are getting people in the cities that are trying

to do country things, like bringing chickens into the garden.

And...that's the problem now.

And then you get people that feed foxes,

which obviously bring them closer and obviously they get tame.

And then you're getting this problem now where they're

coming into people's houses. You know, that's not a natural thing.

You'd never ever ever get that happen in the countryside.

MAKES KISSING NOISES

GUNSHOT

Not all pest controllers think

you can only control foxes by shooting them.

Meet Fox-A-Gon, who expound their own theory of humane pest control.

What these nasty people seem to forget is that all this that we see

around us at the moment, this beautiful landscape

with its vast variety of flora and fauna,

all runs in balance and harmony.

And if you start taking out what you don't like - the squirrels,

the foxes, the badgers - then you end up with nothing.

The team are one of the few humane pest controllers in the UK.

Terry and Graham specialise in evicting and moving on foxes,

rather than destroying them.

People do have a perverse like of killing animals...

for whatever reason.

And conventional pest controllers shoot them on a regular basis,

shoot five and six a day.

We worked out that, not last year, but the year before,

we probably saved, indirectly, the lives of 500 foxes.

A call comes in from west London.

Foxes have built a den under a garden shed

and are kicking up a racket at night.

Big garden shed, full of belongings.

They're going in down the front edge, coming out at the back edge.

Well, obviously, in London you see foxes around all the time,

so it hasn't been a great shock

to see them in the garden.

I suppose the first thing we noticed, really, was just

that there is quite a lot of ground moving from underneath the shed.

He's come underneath the slabs...

scraped all the earth out...

Yeah, I've got blinking eyes in here.

Guys, he's just here.

That may have been one trying to come back in and gone out again.

What, just now? Yeah.

One went that way. Look, he's just there.

A fox tends to have about five cubs a season.

Terry and Graham's approach is to encourage them

to move somewhere where they're not being a nuisance.

Come on, little man.

Little boy.

Poor thing. I'll give him flea treatment,

but I haven't seen a fox cub with this many fleas ever.

He's absolutely... See them up on my skin?

Absolutely riddled with them.

Literally, when they get picked up like that,

they normally wet themselves - I don't know if that one did.

And they're scared, they're very scared,

but the idea is we get them undercover as quickly as we can.

When they get into darkness they become a lot more relaxed.

He'll calm down and he'll just go and lie in a corner.

All the pest controller will do is trap and shoot...

and won't even fox-proof the shed again,

which means, five to seven days in the London area normally,

the other foxes start to encroach in.

So, it's not resolving people's problems

and although it hurts me to evict foxes,

it is the lesser of the evils, as it were.

Each vixen, when she gets pregnant,

will have four or five places like this to go to

and she will quite simply move her cubs on.

So, I've just given it a small dose of that.

Terry and Graham have blocked off the shed.

Their hope is the mother will collect the cub

and take it to a more remote den.

As soon as we're finished,

we're going to release it back in the garden.

It will probably run back up the back of the shed for now...

and then start calling again tonight.

You think it's been abandoned then?

We're not sure. No way of knowing at this stage.

Hopefully not.

Erm...

But, as with all the things we do,

as we go, we'll find out what's happening.

We've got to crack on.

If this cub's mother doesn't come back for it over the next couple of nights,

the team will arrange for the abandoned cub to be rescued.

He's been in that carrier for a few hours.

He's now got somewhere where he's going to feel a little bit secure.

It's going to go quiet, he's going to calm down and, hopefully,

that's the end of the job.

Janet's night-time vigils have proved unsuccessful.

Coming back from holiday, her nostrils are twitching.

I suppose I'd better go and check,

and see what the little darlings have left for me.

What are you expecting, Janet? A lot.

You know, just because I've been on holiday, they won't have been.

Oh!

Don't step in it.

Three, four.

I've tried to block every, you know, access point.

Oh!

If the wind's in the right direction...

I think I said to you once before, you can open the front door

and, if the wind is blowing...

in this direction, it just makes your eyes water.

We decided to help Janet out to identify

the offender by setting up motion cameras.

I'm just hoping that when you put the motion cameras up...

maybe we can find how it's getting in.

Tony's also been unsuccessful with his nights with the gun.

We waited seven days, and on the eighth day we had a night off,

and on the eighth night he came back and took eight chickens.

This isn't killing. This is murder.

He's decided to burn his oppressor's food.

A lot of waste, isn't it?

Just so that little fox wanted something to kill.

He wanted some sport one night.

A chicken roast, but not in a good way.

Fox hunters like Tim increasingly

have to follow foxes into urban gardens.

So, what gun's this?

It's a .22 Rimfire. Erm...

We use this in urban situations simply because it's dead silent.

We should see some foxes tonight. This guy's had a serious problem.

They killed his chickens, they killed his rabbits,

they've killed all of his animals. They've ripped the cages to bit.

You have to kill a wild animal like a fox humanely,

that means either trapping it and putting it to sleep or

calling in someone with a gun licence like Tim.

I am an animal lover. I don't necessarily like shooting foxes.

I think a fox is a nice animal, but in an urban situation

it's generally got worms, carries all kinds of disease.

Yeah, it's only to...

..slow the foxes down,

in case they come out and they run across from one side to the other.

Just so we can get them

so their head is down and we get a correct shot on them.

We actually shot six here one evening...

and four the next.

Ten foxes in two days.

We've shot threes and fours and fives since then,

but... It's one of those places they just keep coming.

MAKES SQUEAKING NOISE

GUNSHOT

A job done.

Yeah, we've done the job.

Very good night.

Urban foxes often live off a diet of food scavenged from dustbins

and discarded takeaways...

..none of which are in Sofia's garden.

I didn't know whether it was a happy cluck or a scared cluck.

Usually, they cluck a lot when they lay an egg.

They were scared, so I ran to the window

and the fox was just sitting there, looking at them.

Although there are already an abundance of foxes,

I think feeding them makes them less scared of humans.

How do you think you would feel if you lived next door to Nobby?

I think I'd call the council.

I... Yeah, I'd definitely do that.

Yeah, I'd be upset, I think.

If you're going to be silly enough to have chickens

and you're not going to have them well locked in or what have you,

you deserve something to take them.

Mrs Fox, do you want your dinner?

The sights and sounds of suburban Barnet.

RATTLING

The urban fox provides hours of harmless entertainment

for thousands of suburbanites.

Oh, they're adorable. They really are adorable.

And how anybody can hurt them, I will never know.

This is where Chris and Dee live...

and they feed the foxes from the top of their steps.

Normally the foxes come out about nine-ish...

in the evening and then just run all over the place.

All normally get round the bowl together, if they can.

They go across to Bob and Joyce's over the road... OK.

They go there between nine and half nine-ish in the evening

and get their supper from there.

Every night, fox frolics.

Entranced householders.

They each have their own little personalities.

You know, there's the one who sits at the back

and waits till the other ones are finished

cos he's a big scaredy cat. Scaredy fox.

And you can tell the other one is a bit more male alpha

and he's sort of like, "I'm having that. Get out of the way."

I just think... They're just lovely.

..animals are just fascinating to watch.

They just need feeding, like anyone.

Yeah. You can't ask them any questions.

You can only learn from watching what they're doing.

At number two, fox TV.

So, you sit here most nights just watching the camera?

He does. I watch the television.

He watches them. He watches that more than he watches that.

Half the stuff on telly's not worth watching anyway.

I came home the other night and I said,

"What's the matter with the television?"

He said, "Nothing on. It's more interesting watching the foxes."

Come on, babies, let's have you.

Right. I'm just going to get it organised.

Terry doesn't just run Fox-A-Gon,

he also volunteers at the Fox Project,

a charity dedicated to rescuing foxes.

The fox cub from under the west London shed was never

collected by its mother, so was brought here.

We see a high percentage of sickly cubs

because they're the ones that Mum leaves behind and people find.

So he was rescued by one of our volunteers and brought in.

It's eating, which is a good sign, and...

I expect it to fully recover.

What's this?

You want a little friend? Eh?

They like company, that's why...

The only reason we put these in there is

because they're on their own without siblings.

So, they fare much better if they've got something in there.

Although it's not warm and it's not another fox.

Gives them something to hide underneath,

like they do their siblings.

Come on, little girl.

They tend to take treatment in their stride.

It's almost as if...

they know we're helping them - not all of them -

but the majority of them.

The fox has always been demonised...

I don't know why.

It manages to live amongst us quite successfully without causing us...

any grief, really. Occasionally it might make a mess in our garden.

How is it treating a fox like that? How does that make you feel?

Like I'm some use, I suppose. Erm...

Being able to treat something that you know wouldn't otherwise

have gotten any medical help when it's got a serious condition.

Erm...

Makes you feel like you're doing

something useful in society, I guess. Pleases me anyway.

A garden under surveillance.

Just don't get a whiff.

He's done that last night.

You can smell it as you come down the stairs.

God, I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing this.

We've got some footage to show you.

We'll go and have a look at it in a moment, shall we? Please.

We wound the cameras back to show Janet the footage.

Next door's cat, our ginger moggie.

Is he going?

It's the cat!

So, it's not a fox - it's the cat.

Wow.

It's got to be.

But I didn't think a cat could give out...

big lumps like that.

The two neighbours think it could have been a fox in the past,

but for now it's a cat on camera.

While the urban fox makes a fine living out of dustbins,

the rural fox is more red in tooth and claw.

In the countryside, you've got a very cunning

and wile animal in the fox.

It's different from a town fox and there's nothing realistically,

apart from dispatching of a fox,

you can do to sort the problem out.

We've lost one lamb, which has obviously been taken by a fox,

and picked up a sort of dismembered lamb,

which was half-eaten by the fox.

So, I've got no option but to get someone in - a responsible person -

to sort this problem out.

Come nightfall, Lee has an appointment with the fox.

Just... Just get a bit of clothing cos it's gonna be cold, I reckon.

We're going to see if we can recall this problem fox.

Lee's not someone to glory in shooting foxes.

For him, it's a job...one which he does as efficiently as possible.

If you're shooting at something live, you want to kill it.

You don't really want to wound it.

You want to make something as humane as possible...

so, that's what we do.

Have the right kit for the job.

It's a very essential piece of kit, the night vision.

We shot hundreds of foxes where you will just not shoot them on a lamp.

You can't even drive into the farm without the fox -

on the other side of the farm - without any lights.

MAKES KISSING NOISE

GUNSHOT

In the last ten years, which I was doing it serious,

I've probably shot...2,000.

2,300 in the last ten years.

Good shot. Very good shot.

Lee's exceptional with a rifle.

That must have been looking straight at Lee, that must have been,

cos he shot is straight in the neck, sort of face on.

We'll take this one back and see if we can spot a few more.

I expect we're going to see a few tonight.

Hopefully get the one that keeps killing our lambs.

He's just texted us about half an hour ago to say that he's just

checked the lambs before he's gone to bed and he's seen one out there.

So, hopefully he's not scared it and we'll get it for him.

It can cost up to ?200 per fox kill,

but it's not easy money for the hunter.

It can take many hours of stalking through the night.

This is the most important fox of all.

This is where we've just seen a fox, across here somewhere.

This... This is, literally, where the lambs have been attacked,

literally sort of 250 metres down here. Right.

We've just seen a fox laid out in the corn down the bottom here.

Which...

We're going to see if we can get a little bit close to it.

Half an hour later, the target is sighted.

MAKES KISSING NOISE

GUNSHOT

There you go. Did you hear the strike? Yeah. Brilliant.

Could that be the problem one?

It's very close to where the...lambs are.

I think what divides everybody between liking foxes

and hating them is, obviously one thing, they look nice.

Nice and red, cute and cuddly...

..and that's what people do see.

But a lot of people don't see the actual destruction

that they do sometimes.

You know, it's only people that live in the countryside or...

You know, people in London now are starting to have chickens

and stuff like that, so they then realise that,

so they then realise what actual damage they do.

Cos if they went into a chicken pen and just took one chicken,

it wouldn't be a problem...

or less of a problem.

There's a certain blood-for-blood justice in the night hunter.

The dead fox laid on top of the lamb it slaughtered.

The farmers like to stroke, basically, to touch or see,

makes them feel better.

Knowing it's... ..dead, basically.

There are 16 foxes for every square mile in London,

the more the merrier for Nobby.

So, Nobby, what time of night is it at the moment?

Do you know? I don't know.

HE LAUGHS

I don't know. I guess it's about half past three, but I'm not too sure.

What's that then? A few bones?

No. That's tuna dog food...

Er...a packet of cat food, some cat biscuits...

and some dog biscuits.

For Nobby, the foxes are companions through the lonely nights.

Yeah, I've always been a night owl, always have been.

I'll be honest with you now.

If I got up at nine o'clock in the morning,

or eight o'clock in the morning, I find the day's too long.

Because there's not much I can do to fill the day in.

Who's going to win in the end then, do you think?

The people or the foxes? Oh, well, the foxes will win.

What can they do about them?

They can't shoot them and they can't poison them.

They...

You can't drive them off because...

more will come in.

And they just have to live with them, I'm afraid.

Sofia is moving out.

She won't miss Nobby's companions and their attentions.

At her new house, she's already setting up defences.

Erm, I just want that everything matches the security

like my old house.

No, I don't miss the foxes at all.

I don't miss the smell they leave in the garden and the poo.

It's nice just to be able to, like, not worry

so much about foxes being in the garden.

You can't really stop foxes - they're everywhere -

and it depends on the area.

There's only certain things that people can do to stop them,

but you can't really go out there and shoot them all.

Put up with it or move house.

Omelettes for breakfast every day.

Contented chickens, heads intact.

It's one of Terry's volunteer days at the Fox Project.

Today, he's releasing a fox they've nursed back to health.

He's put on a lot of weight and his coat's lovely.

This is the best chance he's got, really.

So, you've released the fox back in the same place you found it? Yes.

Give or take...

Bear in mind, wherever you find it,

it's an almost certainty that is part of its territory.

But the choice for us was either put him to sleep,

which none of us really want to do with a healthy fox...

or put him back and give him a chance to carry on with his life.

Fox Project's probably now getting on to 10,000, maybe even more.

So, that's my task done for now. Let's hope he survives well.

In all honesty, you get one that touches your heart, I suppose,

and you like to follow it through.

Good news for Tony - new chickens in the hen house...

and a new security system.

All this work just to keep him out.

God, that's beautiful. They're good friends...

and they're not fox food either, not this lot.

Every night, the dance continues.

He's gone where that other one went.

Fox huggers...

..haters with the latest in deterrent technology...

Take that. Arg!

Vulpes vulpes, the red fox...

our ever bolder suburban neighbour.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd