Let’s start with a question this week. Here goes: If you could name your least-liked wild animal, what would it be?
Rats maybe? Bats? Although judging by the amount of coverage they attract, it probably has to be urban foxes doesn’t it? That awful blood-curdling mating racket they make in the middle of a summer night, just when you’re passing into a sweet dream, sounding like an agonising, long, slow death, rather than a cosy mating ritual to make little cubs.
Those poor vixens! Imagine if that hell were inflicted upon female humans.
We’d die out pretty rapidly as a species, wouldn’t we?
So, no, foxes don’t have a cuddly image and they’re seen as being crafty and out for themselves, but then if you had to fight for every bit of food you need, you’d be a bit wily wouldn’t you? The thing is, the villains of this particular piece are not the foxes. The real villains are the monsters who indiscriminately kill foxes for someone else’s pleasure.
I’m talking huntsmen/women and companies that pay some poor soul a pittance to slaughter animals in batches.
“Snared, bludgeoned and stamped to death” as this paper reported on Thursday. For dog food perhaps? Maybe their organs contain a vital medicinal compound?
No, nothing as useful as either of those. The mass slaughter of these beautiful creatures is often performed in the name of fashion. So that some rich, vacuous airhead can wear a fox-fur coat in a New York winter (there’s LOADS of animal fur wandering around that American city on two legs at this time of the year).
America and China (wouldn’t you know?) are the biggest fans of animal fur as a human fashion piece. Isn’t it really about time that someone told them that the world’s moved on? That we should stop this heinous practice?
It is beyond horrific that we continue to slaughter these beautiful creatures for superficial human vanity.
