We’ve been cursing our neighbourhood lately.  Pandemic aside, our little leafy corner of north London is awash in rubbish.  Missed garbage collections on the circus makes for growing tides of swirling garbage.  Drives super-dude nuts – to the extent that he’s taken to collecting the rubbish himself in and around the woods.  It’s great to clear the place up, but it does make us peeved to have to do it.

One trend that particularly irked the big dude was the regular appearance of worn out shoes of all sorts in our flower gardens out back.  Dress shoes, men’s dancing shoes, sneakers, all sorts!  He was aggrieved and wondered who in their right mind would want to regularly and repeatedly toss old shoes into the yard.

But a recent news report from Berlin has shed light on who the culprits may be….  Foxes!  Our beloved crafty, sneaky foxes.

In an outer suburb of Berlin residents had their flip flops and shoes stolen from their gardens and yards.  But then one resident spotted a fox trotting down the path with two flip-flops in its maws.  Turns out the thieving culprit had a collection of over 100 sets of shoes and flip-flops of all descriptions!  That’s one flippy-fox for sure.

In our neck of the woods, the foxes must be collecting old shoes from the rubbish areas and the charity clothes and shoes dumpsters to drag to the back to play with.  Bless them!  Much as we don’t like the random dumping of shoes in the flower beds, it’s hard to hold a grudge against our favourite vulpines….

Speaking of the crafty so-and-sos… we watched them last night – three foxes frolicking and tussling in the flower beds.  So now we also know how the gladioli get knocked flat to the ground, and our newly planted areas get so dug up.  Grrrrr… Boo….. Hiss…..  Sigh.

Four-footed foxes we can forgive (bipeds less so).