The Urban Fox: A Menace to Owners of Diminutive Dogs

We British are a nation of animal lovers, and the people of London are certainly no exception. Why, you only have to take a stroll through the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham to see a number of young men with Rottweilers or Bull Terriers wearing spiked collars and positively frothing at the mouth with friendliness. I too love all kinds of animals: dogs, cats, ants, birds, sheeps, monkeys, platypi, elephants and beef. I, like most Londoners, treat all animals with love and respect, and only rarely spit at wood lice. In the capital we are surrounded by our animal friends; as well as urban wild animals scampering about in our great city we also like to keep them in London Zoo where they truly belong, where we can ensure that they don’t become delicious roadkill, and where we can take our children to watch the big cats languidly having sex.

On the whole we Londoners coexist peacefully with the local wildlife, but on occasion animals get the hump and do things they later regret, as in the recent lamentable case of Dale’s pet pooch.  This terrible story of animal suffering illustrates the damage that London’s fauna can do and how we humans can have our lives turned upside down by the little fuckers. And few animals are more fuckerish than the urban fox. Whether they are spreading rubbish along the street on bin day when searching for a scrumptious sanitary towel on which to chew, making sounds like a strangled chicken whilst copulating under your bedroom window at four in the morning, or befouling your front doorstep with the putrid results of last night’s panty-liner supper, the urban fox can prove to be a real pain in the sphincter. 

One of their most irritating traits has got to be their penchant for attempting to devour people’s pet Chihuahuas. This has happened to luckless Pepe the hamster-sized canine from Sutton not once but twice. The first foxy attempt on his life was in 2008 which resulted in poor petite Pepe losing an eye. How annoying. Having made a full recovery (with the exception of his now having 50 per cent of the ocular organs that he began with) Pepe was subjected to a second vicious attack on Sunday. His owner Vicky Neophytou was not too pleased about Pepe’s latest adventure – having been alerted to puny Pepe’s plight when she heard squeaking in her back garden she went out to investigate:

“I went out and Pepe was just lying there on the patio with the fox over him and there was blood everywhere. I shooed the fox away, but he didn't go far. He saw all this blood, that Pepe was close to death and obviously thought he was going to be his lunch.”

She then indulged in a mild bout of hysterics whilst on phone to the vet: "It was awful, I couldn't talk on the phone I was hyperventilating, the words wouldn't come out.” But fortunately she did get the words out and Pepe was treated for three broken ribs, several puncture wounds and severe blood loss. He is being kept at the vets under observation for the next few days and is undergoing counselling to help him come to terms with his trauma.

Pepe, Vicky and a veterinary surgeon who doesn't seem to be taking this at all seriously

I think the moral of this story, if there is one, is that all of God’s creatures deserve respect and love, except, of course, for the urban fox, who you’d be well advised to hit in the face with a spade or broken bottle, especially if you own a dog that is the size of pencil case.