Fantastic Mr Fox

The trusty BBC have a series of programmes each season called [insert season] Watch, so SpringWatch etc. Well we're starting our own and it's called FoxWatch. A while ago we realised that there was a fox trotting around the gardens. The first time I saw him he was jumping over the fence and I nearly leapt out of my skin as I spotted him from the greenhouse. He is huge! Or at least he looked that way from my spot where I was potting on in the greenhouse. 

We didn't see him anymore for a while until we spotted him sunbathing the other week. The neighbours have decided to grow a meadow in their garden (the polite way of saying they are lazy gits who don't want to pull up weeds) and the weeds and grass are nearly as tall as the fence. Prime Mr Fox location. Then when it was raining we saw him sheltering under the trampoline (yep they also have a junk yard). But we didn't expect to see baby cubs! Yep, there's a whole Mr Fox family going on now, with the vixen and 4 cubs. They use the garden next door as their playground, and the little ones are bravely trying out our garden for size but the mama fox keeps calling them back through as I think she clearly smells humans in our garden. We're forever up and down as we water the crops in the greenhouse and the allotment area. 

FoxWatch mainly occurs on weekends when we're enjoying our breakfast in bed. We decided to try and get some photos of them so Wavey's set up his camera and tripod:

He's on holiday for a week now so we might get some good photos for FoxWatch. But just in case you don't believe us, here's a very grainy shot of one of the cubs this morning:

We've done some research and we think they're about 8 weeks old now. But they don't grow to full size and disperse until September! We have mixed feelings about it all really. Even though we like watching the family we're not too happy about them being so close, and they are wild animals so I'm a bit scaredy cat and feel nervous about going to the back of the garden on my own (wuss), but at the same time we don't want any harm to come to them as they're not harming us. 

Have any of you ever had foxes so close by? What did you do about it?