At the launch of our recent college Green Week, Trinity College presented the final stages of its bid to secure the Green Flag Award. Part of the assessment comprised a summary of the plants and animals which, along with the rarefied species of Drama studientis and the Lesser Spotted Theoretical Physicist, contribute to campus biodiversity. Foxes were included in this list which surprised me since I had never come across one campus.

Happily though, last Friday evening one made an appearance just in time for the end of Green Week. Displaying the characteristic “boldness” of its habituation to city life and unperturbed by the passing cars, bikes, and rugby players, a large, healthy-looking fox trotted along the road beside me and into a small patch of scrubby bushes outside the Physics building. It must be a member of the den that resides in the Provost’s Garden – which received celebrity status in a recent Irish Times article. It’s intriguing to speculate whether the Trinity foxes cavort on the cricket pitch long after the last reveller has left the Pav on a Friday night? Similarly, I would love to know whether they are exclusive Trinity residents or do they dodge the shoppers on Grafton Street to visit their cousins in St. Stephen’s Green? Perhaps they also visit Merrion Square – pausing along the way to pay homage to some long lost relatives entombed inside display cases within the Natural History Museum.

Urban foxes have received some bad press recently after the rather gruesome story of the fox which bit off a baby’s finger in south east London. The RSPCA was quick to stress that, while truly horrific, this incident was extremely unusual. Despite their reputation for pilfering unguarded bins, foxes are usually quite shy and wary of coming too close to humans. However, in the wake of the London attack, Mayor Boris Johnson, labelled urban foxes as a “pest and a menace” and there were many calls for a large-scale culling operation to be instigated.

These emotive responses to an isolated incident should not be allowed to dictate future policy for dealing with urban foxes. In his recent New Scientist article, Stephen Harris points out that we are more likely to be attacked by pet dogs rather than foxes and culling programs simply don’t work since new animals just move in to fill vacated areas. In his view, it’s human rather than fox behaviours which give cause for concern. He argues that natural history programs which show cavalier presenters coming in to close contact with wild animals encourage people to seek unnatural and sometimes dangerous proximity with urban wildlife. For example, leaving food out in the garden to attract foxes can lead to some great sightings of these beautiful mammals but placing that food close to a house or near open windows or doors is just asking for trouble. Moreover, feeding foxes is a divisive issue in itself – is it akin to leaving food out for birds or does it equate to just attracting unwanted pests into our gardens? Personally, I have no issue with leaving out scraps but buying cat or dog food just for foxes seems excessive, especially when our untidy cities are veritable all you can eat buffets for these city slickers.

Whether you regard them as pest or surrogate pet, foe or friend, foxes are an inescapable feature of urban landscapes. With Trinity’s campus as their playground, who knows what the one I saw gets up to after dark?

Author

Sive Finlay: sfinlay[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons