Can anyone help with an animal query.

For the past couple of hours what looks like an elderly fox has been at the foot of the garden, mainly asleep, although it did get up to have a poo on my grass a couple of times and scampered a couple of yards when I threw a ball at it. It is not apparently terribly scared of me and doesn't look obviously ill. Perhaps it is just very weak.

No guns in the house. I do have a small Jack Russell which would no doubt go into attack mode but I have kept it in so far hoping to avoid a scrap, and bites to either dog or myself in the m.

Should I call the RSPCA, ignore it and hope it will go away, or take more direct action?

Any suggestions gratefully accepted apart from fox meat recipes. Remember, this is a fox and not a squirrel :-)

The trouble with old foxes is that they normally don't have many teeth left and struggle to eat enough (which is why they cause so much trouble and go for other animals which they normally wouldn't bother with, like pets!). It'll most likely starve to death pretty soon.

It may be best to see if the RSPCA may take it, and they would most likely put it down. (You also don't need to dispose of the body either!)

Following a suggestion from Greystone I turned the water hose onto it and off it went. Definitely an ill fox though, it had trouble getting past the fence and squeezed through a hole in it rather than jumping over.

a fox will sqeeze theo` a hole no bigger then its muzzle, having sucessfuly trapped one in the chicken coup one night,by means of a spring loaded door, I found in the morning it had chewed thro` the pigwire, and got away, you have to admire their cunning-almost like a fox really.

Probably dying a slow death from lead poisoning, having been shot at from too great a range with cartridge containing the wrong shot - and people say hunting is cruel !!!

who cares?
foxes are vermin ( the government says so )
shoot the poor b"gger its a better get out than most of us can expect

And the later arrest for posession of an unlicensed firearm is probably the best get out anyone could have :D

Er Greystone? Does that mean both sides are on talking terms or have I missed something?