Foxes leaving clothes and rubbish in my garden

amanda1024

Hi - looking for some advice. I have a small garden in a pretty urban area, and although there've always been a handful of foxes around they've recently got a lot more disruptive (potentially because there are now more of them - I saw a mother with three cubs, and the younger foxes come up towards the house even in the daytime, so I see them when I'm working from home). Previously they've just tended to pass through, but now they've been digging up the garden and leaving rubbish and other peoples' clothes all over the lawn. Is there anything I can do to discourage them from hanging around? And while obviously I throw the rubbish away, I'm not sure what to do with the clothes - I don't know if they're being taken off other peoples' washing lines, for instance, so I'm slightly worried about just chucking them out. Neither of my immediate neighbours has had anything go missing, but the foxes could be taking them from further afield - I just have no way of knowing where!

Farway

I get similar problem, but so far just old garden boots & pet chew toys, luckily from neighbour

I have seen postings on local FB pages & Nextdoor. 

Perhaps photo & post clothes there? 

Not tried, but male wee is supposed to deter them. Not sure how it's applied but no doubt a search will soon tell, you

Brie

No foxes about much this year for us so not having any problems.  But a couple of years back we had a den under our shed - great fun watching the kits come out to play.  And they're like little puppies that like to fight and a bit of clothing is perfect for that.  Maybe their mom and aunts are bringing some home to them??  (read somewhere that it's just the moms, sometimes with a grown female from the previous batch that do the rearing)

Other than that we had them digging up anything that might be edible - ants nests, hidden grubs and larvae - so there was a bit of mess with our lawn and various pots.  Strangely they never were fussed about our garbage bin which has always been outside the kitchen door.  They did however bring home lamb bones - someone had been leaving out their mostly finished legs of lamb from sunday lunch.

The other thing we got was a couple of very heavy leather belts.  I spotted one on a very rainy afternoon and wasn't going to get soaked going out to get it from the garden.  Next day I spotted it again and it was about half the length.  I think if left they would have eaten the whole thing bar the buckle.  It was when I was tidying that away along with a couple of newly abandoned bones that I spotted what would have been a nice leather wallet. Complete with cash and driver's licence!!  That of course made it easy to return it to the chap about 10 doors down who had dropped it when doing some gardening.  

Perhaps you could have a rack with the clothes at your front gate.  I know that where dogs or cats were known to bring home random objects/clothing people knew to look for things that had gone missing at the owners' house.