Tigger, on the way to work, passing through the City, took this live photo and sent it to me. I have converted it to video.
This looks like quite a young fox but as he is on his own and seems to know where he is going, I assume he is independent and making his own life.
How many foxes are there in towns? I have no idea but to judge from how often we catch sight of them, there must be many.
Foxes, like urbanised gulls and quite a few other species, have made the transition from countryside to town. It is to be hoped that they can survive without too much conflict with the human population.
A little later, here he is again!
I imagine that he is patrolling round all the places where he knows there is food to be found.
Foxes, like pigeons and gulls, must be finding it difficult to keep fed because the reduction in trade brought about by Covid restrictions has also led to a reduction in food discarded by pubs, cafes and restaurants.
SilverTiger at home and abroad 
That takes me back a few years… Well, decades.
In the late 70s/early 80s a late friend of mine was an RSPCA Inspector in London (Forest Hill was his patch). He had a string of volunteers who would help to foster or rehome animals that he rescued. One of them (I met her so this is not a friend-of-a-friend anecdote) reported that a vixen had walked over a nearby roof (not sure how the animal got up there) of a neighbouring (and lower) building, entered the woman’s bedroom through an open window, and gave birth to a litter on a pillow while the volunteer was out.
After a couple of days the vixen decided she didn’t like the woman peering in through the bedroom door to see how things were going, and carried her little ones out to somewhere else where she presumably felt safer, which was when the woman had called my mate.
I went with him to her home and saw the evidence – she hadn’t cleaned anything so she could show my mate – and the strongest memory is of the fox’s overpowering musk. Needless to say the woman hadn’t been sleeping in the bed after the vixen left…
Apparently urban foxes can subsist quite well on the scraps of food they find around human dwellings (including cat food left out by cat lovers for local feral and semi-feral cats, and sometimes even the cats themselves). Some well-meaning folks even leave food out specifically for their local fox, or at least they did back then. I don’t know whether that’s still true today.
The foxes also feed on rats, which helps to keep the population down. The feral and semi-feral cats also do their share of rat-munching, as the RSPCA found out when the society’s senior officers commanded all inspectors in London to trap and euthanize non-domestic moggies in their patches, and the rat population soared. My mate had objected to the policy but had no choice but to carry it out. I remember him showing me a huge chest freezer containing his weekly haul, as he waited for the local authority to send someone round to collect them for disposal…
My mate’s story is an interesting one, albeit with a sad ending. He was called to an OAP flat where a feral cat had taken up residence and the elderly couple were concerned for the animal because it appeared injured. In the course of rescuing the cat he was bitten.
Within 48 hours he was in intensive care with massive septicaemia – even though he’d been given antibiotics to combat any potential infection – and a hole in his heart, the result of the bacteria munching on an undiagnosed fenestration in his heart wall (Eisenmenger syndrome).
The hole was unrepairable (his circulatory system had been compensating for too long) and although he did recover to a degree, he was so disabled that eventually he was forced to resign from his position. A few years later he underwent one of the early heart-lung transplants at Harefield, but reacted adversely to the anti-rejection meds, then developed a viral kidney infection, and ultimately passed away, sadly.
Bizarrely, his heart was perfectly OK apart from the hole, so the surgical team patched it up and put it into another heart transplant patient (so-called “domino” transplant). Even more bizarrely, the two men met before my mate became ill and died, and the other guy was in tears as he thanked my mate for saving his life. My mate’s biggest concern was that he felt the other guy had been given a “retread” and was concerned that his patched up heart wouldn’t last for long…
Life. It’s truly a four letter word.
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There are quite a few fascinating stories in your account. It’s sad that your friend died and as a result of trying to help the animals he cared about.
I did join the RSPCA at one point but cancelled my membership when there was a scandal about the sale of fur skins of animals they euthanised. They at first denied it but later had to admit it. I also found it hard to accept that chairs of hunting associations were members of the RSPCA’s governing body. How is that in any way ethical?
The only time I sought their help was when I captured a wounded squirrel. It bit my hand to the bone but I didn’t let go. The RSPCA man came and took it and shortly afterwards they told me they had euthanised it as too badly injured to survive. I had held that squirrel in my (bitten) hands and didn’t (and still don’t) believe them. I felt guilty for betraying the creature I had tried to help and it still hurts.
There are groups who deal with feral cats by capturing them, neutering them and releasing them back into their colony. Slaughtering them as per your account shows exactly what sort of “animal charity” the RSPCA is.
All credit to the lady who allowed the mother fox to find sanctuary in her home (and bed!) to give birth.
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