Fantastic Mr Fox

The Easter weekend meant four days of eating, drinking and more drinking
finishing on Monday with a BBQ. During this time we saw a lot of our
friendly neighbourhood fox. I was about to throw away a chicken carcass
and decided that the fox would benefit from some remnants of the plump
organic bird, so tossed it onto the deck. Sure enough, the fox came back
and disposed of the carcass. Rob had been drinking - a lot - and said he
was going to make the fox "work a bit harder". He tied a length of blue
string to a chicken wing and chucked it onto the deck, holding the other
end of the string. Our dinner guests laughed politely but I could tell
they thought it was a bit odd (one of them is a vegetarian!). We turned
out the lights, and lay in wait, camera poised. I felt a bit like Bill
Oddie bird watching, waiting for the money shot.

The fox came back, and took the wing and unfortunately ran round the
side of the house and not out onto the lawn. The string became taut then
the fox let go, so we reeled the wing back in. A few minutes later, the
fox was back, cautiously peering over the deck. It went for a second
strike and this time ran onto the lawn - hoorah! It tussled with the
string for about a minute, before it succeeded and ran off with its
prize. Strangely satisfying.

The next night, we tried piling some past-their-best sausages onto an
upturned bucket. This wasn't so successful as the deck was covered in
stinky sausies the next morning. We won't be putting out food for the
fox any more.

Postscript. By popular demand here's a video of that first visit, when Mr Fox snaffled the wing, only to run off round the side of the house...