Eventually, my studies in the art of the essay brought me to a final assessment. For this, I chose to talk about a subject which has enraged me my entire life (or at least for as long as I can remember). And as I post this on here, I am struck with a strange sense of sadness, as though it is more relevant today than it was when I original wrote it, almost a year ago now. Today, we live with a government which is incompetent and self-servicing at the best of times, but especially now is showing how little regard it actually has for the wildlife of our country. The abhorrant practice that it fox hunting seems to be at the top of the Conservative Party's manifesto. I hope that by reading my essay on the subject I can garner support for the plight of these innocent animals.
Imagine, if you will, standing alone in a spot of unspoiled natural beauty in the English countryside. The wind whistles through the trees. The sun beats its rays down upon the luscious, green grass. All sorts of creatures are walking or flying around you, but they are all harmless, beautiful things. There is really nothing more peaceful than this experience.
You come across a small, innocent animal. Its coat is a deep orange-brown. Its face, orange with a white outline and beady black eyes, holds no malice; it proposes no threat. It looks at you inquisitively. Its small, black nose twitches cautiously. This creature has done no-one any harm whatsoever. All it wishes to do is to survive.
What would you do if confronted with this creature? The most logical course of action to take would be to ignore it. It has hurt nobody. It does not think in a malicious way. You should have no quarrel with this animal.
And yet, inexplicably, many do. The creature I am referring to is, of course, the common red fox.
One of my earliest memories as a child is of holidaying with my family in a distant countryside location. I cannot remember exactly where, such is the nature of human memory. In this memory, I am about five or six years old. I recall sitting in the back of the small, off-white Rover 200 Coupé which was the treasured family car. After a while, we were brought to a steady halt. I look out the window and am faced with the sight of hundreds – or so it seemed at the time – of middle-aged men and women clad in red and gold regalia, all mounted upon powerful-looking steeds, stately and grandiose. The group canter across the short stretch of road in front of us and then break into a gallop as they dart across a wide expanse of field to the left. The horses leap over the wooden fence marking the perimeter of this field with ease, except for one, which catches the fence with its hind legs, smashing a section of it apart. They do not stop to observe the damage, but continue in pursuit of their quarry. I feel the exact location is irrelevant. The event is the key image in my mind.
At the time I had no idea as to what they were chasing, but was naturally impressed by the magnificent figure before me. What child would not be impressed by such fine clothes? Who would not admire someone on horseback? To me, I probably associated the image with royalty.
Now, older and, I hope, wiser, I am fully aware of what I had witnessed. One of the most baffling examples of human behaviour is, in my mind, the love many share of killing living creatures in the name of ‘sport’. And one of the most popular traditional ‘sports’ of England is the barbaric event that is fox hunting. The fox is not eaten after the hunt is finished. The poor little beast is chased by a group of ‘upper class’ men and women on horseback, led by a group of bloodthirsty hounds. The fox is chased mercilessly, with the most unfair odds imaginable – one fox against an entire hoard of scent hounds. The fox may run for a while, but eventually it will run out of steam, and when this inevitably happens, the hounds are upon him. The fox is torn to pieces. The group will then move off, satisfied that they have had a good day’s hunting, keeping up the good old English tradition of destroying those weaker than them.
After all, the quarry was only a fox, was it not?
These practices are, of course, a thing of the past. The Hunting Act 2004 outlawed the practice of hunting with dogs (particularly fox hunting, but also the hunting of other innocent creatures such as deer, hares and mink) in England and Wales from 18th February 2005.
However, is this really the case? English and Welsh police forces have claimed that they see the enforcement of the Hunting Act as low priority. It seems that crimes against humans are considered far more important than crimes against animals. But when considered more deeply, surely the law seems increasingly absurd: for example, burglary in England carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The perpetrator, after the committing of his crime, may well spend the rest of his days locked away in a small cell, completely cut off from the outside world for all eternity (or at least fifteen years). And yet someone who puts an animal through as much fear, pain and suffering as members of hunts do may only be fined a maximum of £5000; there is no jail penalty for this crime. That is, of course, if the police even bother to take the criminal to task – there have only been nine attempted prosecutions where registered hunts are concerned and, more shockingly, only three have been successful, resulting in a grand total of five huntsmen having been convicted since the ‘sport’ became illegal in February 2005. There have been no convictions since January 2007.
It seems that the wellbeing of animals is of very little concern. Perhaps certain groups of people simply have a natural vendetta against these creatures. There have been numerous reports in the media which have attempted to smear the reputation of our foxes. I remember reading, about a year ago, of a local woman in Solihull who had woken up one morning to find her pet cat’s body lying outside her house. The cat’s head had been cleanly severed, and there were no signs of a struggle. She reported later that the fox who had committed this heinous act had since been destroyed.
I smelt a rat immediately. Firstly, I would question how a fox was able to cleanly sever the head of a cat. I do not wish to include stomach-churning material in this essay, but I must stress that the decapitation could not possibly be a clean slice, unless our foxes have evolved into a state of being where they are able to carry swords around with them with which to commit such acts (and even I admit that, if this were to happen, after the way humans have treated foxes over the centuries, it would perhaps be best for us to adopt the stance of kill or be killed). Similarly, it is highly unbelievable that there would be no signs of a struggle – there should have at least been scars (unless the cat simply lay down and took its punishment). And, finally, the fox was destroyed – but how are we to know that it was the same fox. No – a fox was destroyed. It was probably unimportant whether the animal killed was guilty of the crime or not, as long as revenge was served.
I do not intend to suggest that the entire story was a fabrication – the death of a pet in this manner would be very distressing – but it seems more likely that this would have been the act of a cruel human rather than a fox.
Recently, in another part of the smear campaign seemingly set up against these beautiful animals, it was argued that foxes carry lungworm – a parasitic worm that infests the lungs of vertebrates – and pass this on to other animals. Nationwide favourite lie rag the Daily Mail reported the following, in an article apocalyptically carrying the doom-laden title ‘DEADLY URBAN FOX DISEASE SPREADING TO DOGS’ and written by the famous journalist known as ‘Daily Mail Reporter’:
Dogs are at increasing risk from a deadly parasite spread by urban foxes, experts say. Cases of lungworm infection – an animal disease that causes breathing problems and internal bleeding – have doubled in recent years. The disease arrived in the UK 30 years ago and is carried by foxes, slugs and snails.[1]
The claims laid down here are, once research into lungworm is conducted, clearly false. A fox is a vertebrate, and it is vertebrates which are afflicted with lungworm; invertebrates – usually slugs and snails – are the carriers, and it is the act of sniffing or licking their trails which causes the egg to enter the respiratory tract of an animal. Cats are generally infected by eating birds who have themselves eaten the original host, suggesting that the only way a fox could infect another animal with lungworm would be to be eaten by said animal, and there aren’t that many creatures which actually eat foxes.
So what other arguments are there in support of this disgusting pastime? One of the arguments put forward by supporters of fox hunting is that it is necessary as a form of pest control. Foxes are considered to be vermin by some farmers, as they fear they may lose valuable livestock if foxes are allowed to stray onto their land. Foxes are believed to frequently commit acts of surplus killing, particularly towards chickens, but will only eat one of the many they have killed. However, I am sorry to say that the only creature on the planet which kills animals for useless purposes, i.e. for fun, are humans. Foxes do not have malicious intent when they commit acts of violence against other animals. They will, unless rabid, only attack in self-defense or for food, and provided it is not disturbed, the fox will take all of the chickens it has killed away from the site of death and conceal them elsewhere to eat later, when times are harder. It is understandable that these events can be very damaging to a farmer, and would naturally instil a hatred for these creatures within them, but if better security measures were put in place, these killings would be far less likely to occur. There are now many humane methods of fox-proofing a farm such as electric fences and ultrasonic devices. And besides, if they were always a pest species, it seems odd than many farmers consider them an ally in preventing the arrival of rabbits, moles and voles on the farms. And besides, there has been evidence in the past that farmers were encouraging foxes to breed on their land in order to provide foxes for sport – it seems quite strange that some farmers would actively encourage the presence of these ‘vermin’ on their land.
So immediately it is apparent that this argument holds no water whatsoever. Another – perhaps the main – problem with this argument is that male foxes are territorial animals: as soon as one fox is eliminated from a location, another will move in an take its place, and by only going after one fox at a time the ‘pest’ problem will never be dealt with effectively. So it is very clear that this is simply a feeble attempt at justifying the barbarous actions of these individuals. And, it must be admitted, if it was truly to do with pest control the so-called ‘exterminators’ wouldn’t be required to assemble on horseback clad from head to toe in ceremonial regalia in a manner steeped in tradition. Is it in any way realistic to imagine a pest control team chasing rats around a city with dogs blowing bugles?
The question which hangs in the air around all of this madness is as to who the real enemy is. Is it the hunters themselves, engaging in the sport for the sake of tradition? Is it the current Prime Minister, who seems unmovable regarding his desire to relinquish the ban on fox hunting? Or is it the media, reporting ‘facts’ to the public under the guise of ‘news’ whilst simply broadcasting their own political views? In my opinion, there is no one source for this enmity against our beautiful native foxes. We shall always find supporters of blood sports and we shall always find those who oppose them, just as we shall always find folk who enjoy football and those of us who wish it would simply go away. But I think it highlights a certain strange, sinister desire hidden deep within the psyche of the supporting side when they are happy to invent facts and transmit them to the public through whatever medium is at their disposal in a truly pathetic attempt to convert the opposing side to their point of view.
Can there ever really be any justification for this disgusting sport? I would be very surprised if, before the Hunting Act is once more voted upon in 2012, we do not hear even more arguments for the continuation of this ‘sport’, attempting to dress up what is clearly just a game to those taking part as some sort of necessary heroic culling activity. And I fully expect the ban to be repealed as so many seem to be against it. But it would be a return to a lowly, vicious state of being for mankind.
Surely we have progressed beyond such barbarism?
When I think back to that day, many years ago, when I first witnessed a hunt, my mental image is always accompanied by music. The song playing on the car’s radio was Phil Collins’ ‘Another Day in Paradise’. When I think back to what that fox must have been going through at the time, my father’s choice of music seems rather ironic.
2011
[1] Daily Mail Reporter, ‘DEADLY URBAN FOX DISEASE SPREADING TO DOGS’, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373857/Deadly-urban-fox-disease-spreading-dogs.html, [accessed 10 April 2011].
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