While doing the rounds on various shows to promote Project Hail Mary, I saw a clip of Ryan Gosling on BBC Radio 1’s “Unpopular Opinion” segment, expressing his desire for London to embrace foxes. I was shocked to hear host Greg James inform the Hollywood star that his take was, in fact, controversial.
I scrolled to the comments. Most people thought of them as pests and a nuisance. I was shocked.
I’ve loved foxes ever since I was young. I remember when I was six years old, sitting in the back of the family car on our way home from a party. As the younger sibling, I was wedged into the middle seat between my two older sisters. We were driving down a dark, tree-laden road when my dad shouted, “Look, a fox!”
I hadn’t seen it. In fact, I had never seen a fox at that point. But for some reason, I didn’t want my family to know I hadn’t seen it, so I lied and said I had. Later that night, as my dad tucked me into bed, I asked: “Dad, you know the fox that ran out in front of the car… was it on two legs or four?”
My only reference point for a fox back then was Fantastic Mr Fox, and my child brain had pictured it running upright on its hind legs.
Now, however, I live in London, and almost every day I see foxes scurrying along my garden fence or playing in my garden. I love having foxes around. I thought almost everyone did, until I saw that clip.
I know foxes are infamous to some for their loud lovemaking. And of course: “They go through the bins and make a mess!” is a common complaint. But I’ve always felt this says more about the human in question than it does about the foxes. Foxes aren’t to blame; it’s people’s inability to understand how a lid works (a real bearbug of mine).
If you leave your bin bag overflowing, or outside the bin entirely, you can’t really blame a starving fox for smelling food and wanting to eat it. The fox isn’t a nuisance. The fox is trying to survive.
My Instagram algorithm has recently become full of fox content, and one pattern I’ve noticed is people saying they don’t mind rural foxes; it’s the urban ones they don’t like. These people are clearly forgetting that they’re urban because we stole their environment. The fox was here 100,000 years before we turned up.
Of course, those living in rural areas who keep chickens do have the issue of foxes eating them (the chickens, not the people who keep them). I’m fully aware of this (as I mentioned earlier, I’ve read Fantastic Mr Fox), but again, these foxes are just trying to survive. I can’t really blame them; I’m a vegetarian, and even I have been tempted by chicken on my way home late at night. Although, just to be clear, the kind tempting me comes in a box with chips.
Rather than viewing them purely as a nuisance, we should recognise and celebrate the benefits they bring. One of the most practical advantages of foxes is their role in natural pest control. They eat rodents and other small animals that can otherwise become a huge problem in cities.
Would you rather your neighbours put out poison to deal with rats and mice, risking your pet cat or dog eating it and becoming ill? Or would you rather a fox handle it for free, meaning the fox gets fed, the rat is dealt with, your pet stays safe and you avoid the risk of Lyme disease?
I posted an Instagram story recently of my cat sitting inside watching foxes play in the garden, and a lot of international followers couldn’t believe we have foxes roaming wild in London. They thought it was amazing. They were right. We should be celebrating this!
Some people who feed foxes even notice that they understand routines. A listener of my podcast told me she feeds them every night at 8pm. Her cat, who has also learned the routine, comes inside, and together they watch the foxes eat.
Foxes seem to get a bad reputation. Back in 2017, during the height of the Croydon Cat Killer, who later became known as the M25 cat killer (presumably when the sociopath who was killing cats got a driver’s license), there was widespread panic about cats being killed. My own cat, Richard Parker, was a victim of this and was shot in December 2017. He survived, but lost an eye.
When the police couldn’t find the culprit, they blamed it on foxes. It’s worth noting that many of the cats were left on doorsteps, and mine had a bullet in its head. So, unless foxes can identify where cats live and operate air rifles, I find it quite hard to believe that foxes were to blame.
My cat still goes outside (we’ve moved), and although he’s a little wary of the larger foxes (usually when they’re breeding in my neighbour Caroline’s garden), they seem to get along. He happily watches them play from indoors, and they sometimes wander up to the back door and watch him. Perhaps wondering why he’s allowed inside and they’re not.
So the next time you find yourself complaining that foxes have been through your, or hopefully your neighbour’s, bins, remember that we’re the ones living on their land, not the other way around.
They’re not pests, but amazing creatures who have been able to adapt and coexist with humans despite everything against them (namely, us!).
If I had my way, the fox would be the national animal of Britain, and this summer we’d all be singing “Three Foxes On Our Shirt” during the World Cup.
This week I have been…
Reading… I love exploring second-hand bookshops when I’m away on tour. My only rule is that I can only buy one second-hand book per town or city. This is because I’m far away from home and have to carry it, and because my bookcase is already overflowing.
I’m currently reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. His books are the most atmospheric I’ve ever read. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, and as the cover attests, if you read one Western in your life, you should make it this one.
Walking… It can be easy for me to open up my laptop and start writing in the morning, and then before I know it, it’s three o’clock, and I haven’t eaten lunch. So in order to make sure I leave the house, I always go for a walk.
I would like to get into running but a walk means you don’t have to jump in the shower when you get home, and also that you can take a bag and pop to the shops on the way back (I think I might be good at coming up with good excuses for why I shouldn’t run).
Routining… I just looked it up and that is a word.
When I’m on tour, I could be in a different place each day (I once played to 80 people in London on a Friday night and walked out in front of 13,000 people in Melbourne on the Monday night).
So when life is unpredictable, a routine can be hard to stick to. I’ve therefore found routine in food: I have porridge for breakfast, an omelette for lunch, and then dinner is when I can be a little more flexible: a stir fry, a curry, a bolognese, a poke bowl, a pasta dish, or a gnocchi dish.
When I was young, I used to like it in American sitcoms when the family had a particular meal on a particular day of the week. I’ve not quite got to that…yet.
Jake Lambert’s weekly podcast, Had Worse Mondays, is available now
