Fantastic Mister Fox

There are plenty of urban foxes in my neighbourhood. I still find it exciting and surprising when I catch sight of them. Maybe it's the cold weather and a lack of food, but they seem to be getting bolder by the week. I find myself laughing out loud when one runs across the road in front of me, bold as brass, in broad daylight.It's just so unexpected. Tonight there were three of them outside my flat, two of them on the roof of the bike shed barking at one another. Hooligans! One of my favourite aunts when I was a child was a real animal lover. We loved to hear tales of how she had kept a vixen as a kind of pet in the middle of Salford. Later she moved to Little Hayfield with my grandparents in their retirement years. Surrounded by a motley crew of dogs, cats and other animals, she had a running battle with the local gamekeeper to protect foxes. He was responsible for the shoot on Kinder, and often hung a dead fox from a children's swing in his garden as a warning to others. My sister and I detested him for it, and I suspect my aunt often felt intimidated as she walked her dogs on the moors. When I first lived in Sheffield twenty five years ago I had slow worms at the bottom of my garden and regularly saw kingfishers and herons eyeing up the fish in my next door neighbour's pond. I wondered if things had changed when I moved back from the Peak District to the city nearly two years ago. It seems not. Earlier today a friend posted some wonderful photographs of a kingfisher taken in a local park. A roe deer has been spotted in the General Cemetery. Wildlife brings a magical connection with nature into the city.