Terry Collins wrote:

snip

The foxes gets the bad PR, but the cats are responsible. Go out spot
light hunting and you can be overrun with cats every night, but only see
a fox once a month.

I *have* to tell this story!

Years ago, my sister and I had a very skinny horse. In an attempt to help him
put weight on, we would give him a hot mash (with molasses) each morning.
Nothing happened! He stayed skinny (but ate - well - like a horse!) One morning,
after delivering the hot mash, we went back to retrieve a forgotten bucket.
Imagine our surprise when a big (fat) dog-fox jumped *out of the trough*, in
which he had been sharing with the horse!

We began to watch this fox and even got a reasonable photo of him. He would wait
until we had plonked the mash in the horse's trough and then, quick-as-a-wink,
hop in alongside the munching horse's head. He would eat for five minutes or so
and then hop out again. With a whisk of his tail, he'd be gone off up the creek
to parts unkown!

The *really* strange thing is that this horse was *notoriously* 'thingy' about
his tucker! If you hung around too long after putting his feed in the trough,
his ears would go back and he'd snake his neck out and bite you on the nearest
hunk of yourself he could reach. For some inexplicable reason, he took utterly
no notice of Mr Fox hopping in his trough and scoffing off half his breakfast!
In the end, a hefty dose of worming paste and an evening mash got the weight on
the horse and he did much better. We lost track of Mr Fox, but whenever I see a
fox pup on the Minmi Road, I wonder if it's one of his descendants!

--
Trish {|:-}
Newcastle, NSW, Australia