Outraged British woman exploited by the universe, abandoned by her fellow man:
A mother from Faversham who found a dead fox in her garden was outraged to be told to put the body in the wheelie bin (garbage can). Carol Whelen, of Springfield Avenue, found the animal in her garden on Sunday, August 7, but despite calling Swale Council, her housing association AmicusHorizon, the RSPCA and an organization called Fox Protection, she found no one willing to remove it.
Please, can’t somebody do something?
h/t
“Whoo, Curly Sue is goinna have an elegant wedding feast!”
Ive read BS on this blog before but the response to this story is so outrageous that this little ol’ lady will put in her two cents worth.
Why should she have to pick it up, even if she has a shovel big enough to handle it? Who says she would be able to handle a shovelful of fox and get it wrapped up? Who say it didn’t have rabies?
Who says she had a neighbour to help her? And who says the neighbour would have even if she asked?
I had four dying raccoons in my backyard, a sound that lasted all night. I had no way to dispatch them, either by putting them out of what was obvious misery, or by driving their bodies – where?
I telephoned the police because we had been warned only a couple of weeks prior to report suspicious raccoon deaths since our area had rabies.
The police couldn’t shoot a gun because it would upset the neighbours. I called again in the morning to say one was still alive, but in agony. Should I have gone out with a shovel and beaten it over the head till it died?
And how was I supposed to dispose of four bodies?
What a snarky thread. You obviously haven’t read your bibles lately.
Gellen, it was in her back yard. Her back yard. Say she has some disability, aside from her weight, making it impossible for her to lift a few pounds. Okay, well, she has a family member or a neighbor or a friend or somebody who’ll do it for her. If her neighbors are all complete jerks then she can offer to pay them (might be worth 10 pounds).
“The police couldn’t shoot a gun because it would upset the neighbours. I called again in the morning to say one was still alive, but in agony. Should I have gone out with a shovel and beaten it over the head till it died?”
Up to you. I would have. Nasty, but better than letting it suffer.
And look, I’m no doctor, but you can’t get rabies from something you pick up with a shovel. I think the dead fox/raccoon has to bite you before you get rabies. Anyway, they can treat rabies nowadays.
“And how was I supposed to dispose of four bodies?”
Trash can.
“And how was I supposed to dispose of four bodies?”
Compost bin?
Carol Whelen is 58(middle age not old age) and looks plenty fit in the photo.
(straight back good for lifting a 25-30lb. fox)
She has environmental concerns over the fox being poisoned and thereby poisoning the garbage dump.
Rabies?
You have to be bitten, the rabie virus is in the animal’s saliva.
Wiki claims rabies from ground animals has been eradicated in the UK and bats are the only reservoir left.
Animals that die from rabies virus, rather than being shot or bludgeoned, actually look like very sick diseased animals, it is a wasting disease.
Whelen’s solution, if she didn’t want to touch the animal, should have been to say the dead animal looked diseased instead of saying it might have been poisoned.
That likely would have gotten action for the sake of saving healthcare £s.
What a snarky thread. You obviously haven’t read your bibles lately.
What does the bible have to do with it?
Nothing that I’ve read,(only 7 references to foxes and 2 of fox in the whole book), and nothing about entitled middle aged British women who won’t do for themselves at all.
I just take the the critters that meet an untimely end in my yard and simply throw them in the river. Nature will take care of them PDQ….
“Why should she have to pick it up?”
Why would anyone assume that someone else has an obligation to pick it up, gellen? It was in *her* garden; why should it be the taxpayers’s responsibility?
Foxes aren’t very big (about 10 pounds, not 25-30 as Oz suggested) and a lot of that is skin and bones; a sick or dying one probably weighs considerably less than that. If you had an uncooked pot roast in the back of your fridge, and it started to go bad, would you call some government agency to remove it, or would you just throw it out?
“You obviously haven’t read your bibles lately.”
Is there a scriptural passage about the government’s responsibility to dispose of any small dead animals you find in your garden?
Foxes aren’t very big (about 10 pounds, not 25-30 as Oz suggested)
I was bamboozled by the large fluffy tails.
*so I guess squirrels don’t weigh 5-7 pounds?*
8^)
There’s a dead fox in the middle of the road, and it’s stinkin’ to high heaven… Hmm. Needs work.
I blame the 7lb. squirrels on Global Warming…
gellen, I had a raccoon run under the back wheel of my motorcycle one night. Broke its back, it was kinda going in circles on somebody’s front yard until it got tired. Then it just suffered.
So I smacked it on the head with my helmet really hard, which killed it instantly. Then I tipped it into a cardboard box and went on my merry way.
I could have just left it there all busted for the cats to get, and the ants, but that would be dishonorable. Gotta do what you gotta do. YMMV.
Phantom: were you born in 1928?
Anyone who doesn’t understand the reference to reading the Bible about the “snarkiness” in the comments, obviously hasn’t read the Bible.
I found this in the Bible. I multisexed it for you too.
The slothful (wo)man roasteth not that which (s)he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent (wo)man is precious.Prov 12:27
I was waiting for the, “who says it didn’t have rabies?” comment.
England is a rabies free island, so, in my official capacity as a veterinarian, I say it didn’t have rabies.
Yeah Phantom you didn’t read the bible, it says clearly “Thou Shall Not Bury A Dead Fox”. Everyone got together and voted that one into the Ten Commandments. We still call it the Ten Commandments even though we added a few in the last couple of years, sorta like the Big Ten conference.
In the sixties I used to have a neighbor who had mice in his house. So would set traps to catch them, and then call me to come and take them out and dispose of them. And this was grown “mature” man, calling upon a 12 year old kid.
Needless to say he, unlike me, didn’t hunt, trap or butcher any. Not that I was around in the 30’s, but I remember my fathers and elders talking and have concluded that if a 30’s type depression (or any hard times) were to reoccur, such a person would, I assume, acquire quite a different attitude.
As I am fond of saying: The world has become soft and “pussified” by collectivists and “disneyites”.
Gellen, I had to dispose of a chipmunk that a cat had savaged. I covered it up with a paper towel and smashed its head with a hammer. I was sick and shaking, but I was the one on the spot and it was my responsibility to see to it that it didn’t suffer any longer. I think I could have done the shovel thing with a raccoon if I had to. I doubt I could do it to a cherished family pet, but it would depend on how desperate the situation was–if I judged that hauling it to the vet would take too long and make the agony unbearable. It comes down to measuring your own squeamishness and suffering against that of another creature, and simply summoning up whatever you’ve got as courage.
As far as the fox? Well, yes it was probably not very pretty–might even have been maggoty and stinking–but again, you just do what you have to do. That’s what being a grown-up means.
Looking at the photo, my impression is that the woman can’t pick up the fox corpse, at least not if that would require bending over.
Obviously some of us got our fat genes from the U.K.!
Anyone who doesn’t understand the reference to reading the Bible about the “snarkiness” in the comments, obviously hasn’t read the Bible.
Anyone who can’t quote chapter and verse, expounding on how those particular verses apply to a particular situation, may have read the bible but sure didn’t comprehend what they read.
Gellen: if the woman in question was 83 years old, and was complaining about having no one in her life either willing to help her out or understanding of the fact that she needs help, I would be entirely sympathetic and wouldn’t have written the post.
The snarkiness in this thread wasn’t as much directed at her personally as it was an expression of annoyance at the increasingly widespread assumption among the young and the healthy that some governmental agency or other is — MUST be — responsible for taking care of every trivial, entirely quotidian problem.