Forum Topic

Foxes won't bother your rubbish if ........

We haven't had any problems with foxes getting into our rubbish bags now that we spray them at night with a weak bleach and cheap shampoo mixture.  The shampoo helps the spray to stick.  The foxes really don't seem to like it.  Cost is negligible as well.  Give it a try - nothing to lose except a fox or two.

Charles Campbell ● 5926d29 Comments

Great tip Charles thanks.  Foxes don't like strong chemical smells.  I put my bag out in the morning so Foxy doesn't usually get to it at all as he's too busy digging up the plants in my garden during the night.  Would be tempted to try this around the garden but bleach and shampoo won't be good for the soil.

G Lord ● 5926d

we sometimes spray ours with cheap furniture polish, however we now put the bags out in the morning. Its too much of a pain clearing up after them as they will get into them in the end. The best thing we can do is use are green food boxes and not be putting food into black bags!!!!

Stephen Neill ● 5926d

Cheap furniture polish = chemical smell, they don't like it.Take away the food source from the black bags and Foxes along with other vermin will soon move on.

G Lord ● 5926d

Only thing you have to do now, which will be the hardest thing is to stop so called animal lovers leaving food out for them.

J Smith ● 5925d

They will be surprised that when they stop leaving food out for the Foxes, the rat population will also decrease, almost overnight.Leaving meat out will always attract the wrong sort of wildlife.Lets hope this irresponsible behaviour stops before another child is injured.

G Lord ● 5925d

Yes, I wonder how long it will take before the penny drops.

J Smith ● 5925d

Of course there is a sure fired way to get rid of them .......shoot them!

J Smith ● 5925d

"...stop leaving food out for the Foxes, the rat population will also decrease, almost overnight."What a div. Didn't you know foxes kill rats?

Robin Taylor ● 5925d

They may do - but apparently they prefer food left out by people more.

J Smith ● 5925d

They do but the diet of urban Foxes consists mainly of fast food, food from bins and other waste supplied by humans.  Rodents make up a tiny part of the urban fox diet.What a double div you are.

G Lord ● 5925d

Once the readily available food source has gone away, vermin such as foxes and rats etc will go away - quite logical if you think about it.

J Smith ● 5925d

Thats exactly it, which is why I am giving the food caddys my full support (if and when it arrives!).Leaving meat out attracts the wrong sort of wildlife, which is why meat is seldom put on a compost heap.

G Lord ● 5925d

Yes, I am wondering when these elusive caddy's will arrive. Will be looking forward to utilising it and stopping the spread vermin in the area.

J Smith ● 5925d

Does anybody know the percentage of houses that recycle? and those that don’t how do we change their attitudes.

Tony Maxey ● 5925d

We could always make them clear up after themselves.

J Smith ● 5925d

Recycling was sold to the public in much the same was as religion was sold many years ago, by scaring people.Put in very simple terms: if you don't do it you arent a good person and the world will run out of resources and we'll all die.Why do we put stuff out for recycling?

G Lord ● 5925d

This may be true. The "Green" people certainly do try their utmost in pushing forward organic this and that and the only difference I have found is that organic stuff costs a lot more!True we will run out of resources if we don't watch what we are doing, but realistically speaking the damage that has been done cannot be rectified.

J Smith ● 5925d

There you are, the end is nigh!Who says we will run out of resources?  What are their motives, the Governments only got interested in green policies when they worked out they could get some income from us because of it.Seriously why do we bother to recycle stuff every week?  No-one forces us to do it, we don't get paid to do it, but we do it all the same.

G Lord ● 5925d

Its our natural inbuilt guilt in us. We feel bad if we don't do it.I don't have a problem actually recycling, the only problem I have with it is the space some of the boxes, bags take up in a the small kitchen I've got.If we could actually see what they do with our recycling instead of showing us pictures of landfill, it might help matters.

J Smith ● 5925d

re: Its our natural inbuilt guilt in us. We feel bad if we don't do it.----------Exactly the same way religions work?Landfill is sometimes a good thing?  Arent some parts of Essex and Wales built on reclaimed land?  Its good that the poor people in those places can have somewhere to live.Parts of West Ealing was once a quarry pit that was used as landfill for the rest of London.  Now its a bustling little town with some expensive properties.At this point I should point out that I do use the recycling facilities whenever possible, but the question is why do YOU recycle?  Do you have proof that the world will end in xxx years time or have you just been told this by the state?

G Lord ● 5925d

Yes I believe some parts of Essex is built on reclaimed land - Canvey Island for one springs to mind, although why people would want to live there I don't know, it's awful! Not sure about Wales though.I don't mind recycling, means my black bag is a lot smaller than it used to be and I don't have to put both white bag and green box out every week - I think one or both go out every 2-3 weeks.Don't know when the world will end as probably won't be here, mind you certain football fans probably think it already has ended.

J Smith ● 5925d

I tend to recycle in the hopeless belief that Ealing won't get fined for not meeting their landfill targets and my council tax will go down.  Alice in Wonderland comes to mind.

Charles Campbell ● 5925d

Wouldn't want to live in Essex or Wales, ask for directions and you'd get an earfull of spit. Canvey Island is built on reclaimed land, built by Dutch engineers as I understand.In the Lord household a black bag used to go out every week, thats now down to once every 2 weeks, but as I eat a lot of fish, it pen an inks a bit by then/  With the caddy, it should be even less.

G Lord ● 5925d

Thats it Charles, another word used in religions "belief".Who will fine Ealing?  The same people who collect the money and set the targets per chance? 

G Lord ● 5925d

In my opinion Canvey should be bombed! Yes you are right that it was reclaimed by the Dutch - the little Dutch House there was vandalised a few weeks ago.I would only put my black sack out every couple of weeks but don't as I'm not too fond of bin smells.So Ealing has a landfill quota, not a recycling quota?

J Smith ● 5925d

Think it is called pocket money

J Smith ● 5925d

I know in Hayes they have one clear bag for recycling and the rest goes into a black bag. So why do Ealing council bombard us with all these recycling buckets?

Tony Maxey ● 5925d

"Wouldn't want to live in Essex or Wales, ask for directions..."And to think they could have been made by Noah spring cleaning his Ark! Or was that the land mass linking Canada to Mexico?

Alan Brainsby ● 5924d

It isn't just the fines for too much.  The cost per tonne for landfilling our waste is set to rise every year. The amount of rubbish that we throw away has increased.  When I was a child, we only had one dustbin. We fitted the rubbish into it.  Can you imagine having a dustbin lined up for every black bag that we were throwing away before we started to notice what was happening?  As it is many people are still not flattening cardboard or the large plastic bottles.  How logical is it to expect to pay for the guys collecting boxes to spend masses of time flattening them?  Or the Council to hire more lorries because they are filled with boxes full of air?  It can't be because we ultimately pay for this in our Council Tax.In general we buy more than we need and throw a lot of it away. We can buy on credit so don't need to manage our money and food in the same way as we used to. We don't cook, don't teach our children to cook and expect to eat at home as if we were in a restaurant all the time.  Simple meals have now become bought in noodles in a pot rather than something on toast.  We think we need to follow a recipe to the letter and can't improvise. Once we couldn't afford to throw away leftovers - we ate them and enjoyed them.  (Sometimes it is disappointing when there aren't any!) Now many people still can't afford to throw them away but do.

Philippa Bond ● 5924d