Is There Ever a Good Time For a Wildlife Story?

Probably not so I'll give you the abridged version;

Some of you may remember that there used to be a family of foxes living underneath the shed in my garden. Then one day one of my neighbours tried breaking into my house and the foxes chased them away. So the council came round and killed the lot of them - the foxes that is, not the burglars. With no foxes anymore the space under the shed got taken over by rats which I think you'll agree is a far worse problem.

A while ago I happened to mention this problem to my mother and then, a few days later a new young fox turned up who seemed so unafraid of humans and behaved in such a generally un-fox like manner that I got the distinct impression that he'd been reared by humans. Recently that fox has been trying to make friends with us. Now if you've ever had a pet dog or cat you will know that they sometimes try and show their affection by leaving you little "gifts" like the odd dead mouse or the occasional mortally wounded bird. This fox is trying the same thing but he's far too streetwise for dead rodents so his "gifts" have included gloves, wallets and at least one mobile phone.

Although most of these things have been salvaged from nearby rubbish bins he did recently deliver us a wallet that contained a pensioner's travel pass and contact details for a daughter. So rather then simply handing the travel pass in at the local railway station my father spent a large portion of last week trying to make contact with the daughter and making arrangements to return the pass to it's rightful owner.

Also last week we discovered a wasp's nest in the rafters of the house. So a man came in on Thursday (29/9/11) and dusted the entrance to the nest with a special powder and by Friday (30/9/11) all the wasps were dead.

And in case you haven't worked it out by now it's Tuesday October 4th and I got back from the pub to discover everything is OK at around 20:10.