I Just Remembered Why The Best Thing About ‘Country Life’ Magazine Is The ‘Tottering-By-Gently’ Cartoon…

…so thanks for the reminder, Clive Aslet, Editor at Large. By which I mean this stinking pile you left in the ‘Comment’ section of the ‘Daily Telegraph’:

I was wondering when it would happen.

Were you? Really?

Foxes are large animals, as big as many dogs (Ed: I assume he doesn't mean 'put together'..?). Of course, as in the terrifying incident at Homerton, one would attack babies sooner or later.

Of course! Why didn’t we see it coming!?

Actually, this has already happened. In 2002, at Dartford in Kent, a fox bit a 14-week-old boy in the living room of the family home while his mother was sleeping. The last government preferred to ignore the episode; it was, after all, trying to ban foxhunting at the time.

Or perhaps it preferred to ignore the episode because it was such an uncommon occurrence.

It was, after all, going to be eight years before another one…

Surely, if foxes are now harming babies, it is time for something to be done about them.

Something must be done!!!

First, let’s see if the story pans out. Secondly, let’s evaluate the risk. Thirdly, let’s not go off the deep end.

Foxes are not alligators, bears or mountain lions. The risk, if indeed there is one, should be calculated accordingly.

Yet this is not as straightforward as it might seem.

Oh, really?

While country dwellers refer to foxes as vermin, that is not how they are officially classified; this means that local authorities do not have a statutory obligation to control them.

And why the need for cash-strapped local authorities to have to bear this burden?

As we saw in the furor over the Sussex County Cricket Club incident, there’s scope (no pun intended!) for businesses and other organisations to hire individuals to do this work, so why not private citizens who have a problem?

It would be an easy thing for this Government to change the legislation.

I think there’s a lot of legislation that I’d rather see them tackling first, frankly…

Urban foxes cannot be shot using conventional rifles, but why not with anaesthetic darts?

Eh..?

Silly me, I'd assumed an editor of 'Country Life' might be expected to be...well, not such a hapless buffoon. Look, idiot, you can't expect traquillisers to take immediate effect. That only happens in the movies.

And I see no indication that a ‘conventional rifle’ wasn’t used in the above case…

Snaring would be cruel, but it can't be beyond human intelligence to devise an effective trap.

It can’t, and it isn’t.

You’ll note (assuming, Clive, that you’ve actually read any of the reports about the subject you are pontificating on) that a fox was indeed trapped and destroyed in the garden of the house where the babies were allegedly attacked. With a trap. One that currently exists, and does the job.

The pro-fox lobby say it would do little good: clearing an area of foxes would simply create a vacancy, which would then be filled from neighbouring territories. I'm not so certain.

What sort of ‘countryman’ are you, that you are unaware that – given optimum conditions – a wild population will not expand to take up new territory?

You might also have to make sure bins were tied down and old ladies forbidden from leaving out scraps.

Fantastic! The Fox Police! They can come and rummage through our bins after the Waste Police employed by the local council have done so!

/facepalm

Do me a favour, Clive. Stick to glossy magazines with unfeasibly expensive property adverts…