I've been sorting through some images this evening and… in between deleting my first spam from the comments here… came across this photo. It was taken back in August, and shows the fox cub getting slightly too interested in the camera. This is "as is". I was holding the camera and he nudged up against the lens as I took the picture. 😉
And since the question was raised on one of the photo albums, I thought I'd mention the issue of allowing foxes to become somewhat too comfortable with humans. It's a fair point. There's certainly a case that wild animals should be left as such.
Our interaction with the local fox population all started in the spring when we spotted an adult fox lurking in the garden in very poor condition. On the advice of a local rescue centre we started leaving food for it with some added cod liver oil supplement. Things took off from there. His coat and tail began to improve, and the cubs started showing up as well. We're located in a semi urban area and the foxes are a very regular feature of garden life here, and well tolerated. Our local rescue centre has had 38 foxes pass through its doors this year. The main irritation was that they would rip rubbish bags open and leave a fair old mess in the street on refuse collection day. Recently though, that source of food has been removed as we now all have large plastic 'wheelie bins' which are fox and sea gull proof. So the small amount of garden feeding is doing little other than replacing a primary food resource for the urban fox. That said, they do still hunt in gardens, mainly for grubs, worms and frogs, but I have seen them attack birds and clamber into the trees after eggs. Most of the foxes are still very shy of humans, and of our regular visitors (there are at least three foxes we see) only one is confident in our company. The others fly off at the first sign of movement.
Local pets seem to cope fine with the foxes though. Our dog when he was alive would simply ignore them (!), and the local cats aren't too bothered by them either. If you don't believe me on the latter point check out the Cat and the Fox video I took a month or so back. That cat will quite happily sit in the garden when the foxes are about.
From what I've seen on the web, it's a very different story in other countries, mainly because the foxes haven't integrated into urban areas as successfully, but also because of the fear of disease. The UK is rabies-free, so one of the specific dangers of wild animals is absent here.
As for the fox… he knows when he's well off.
Oh, and the September gallery is now complete.