Outfoxed!
RSPCA hauls pensioner to court for keeping trapped vixen as a pet... but he’s cleared of animal cruelty
WHEN animal-lover Michael Myers trapped a fox in his garden, he decided to keep her as a pet.
Fearing she might die if released into the wild, the 67-year-old called her Vicky and put her in his shed, even taking her on a lead for walks with his dogs.
But after a neighbour complained to the RSPCA, Mr Myers was charged with causing unnecessary suffering to the animal and taken to court.
Mr Myers has now been cleared after telling magistrates of his two-year devotion to the vixen.
He said that years previously he had shared his house with another fox, which he took to the pub on a lead.
Mr Myers has a menagerie of ducks, chickens, ferrets, dogs and a golden pheasant.
He caught Vicky when he set a cage trap to protect his chickens while he went on holiday.
On his return, he found the docile vixen unharmed inside. Two more foxes were caught soon after, but he let them go – only keeping the little vixen to take for walks in nearby fields.
Representing himself at Peterlee Magistrates’ Court in County Durham, he said: ‘My intention was to keep it as a pet.
‘It was very good. It had never killed and I fed it right. I am not cruel. I just look after stuff. If I think an animal can be saved I will try and save it. I am an animal lover. I have never done anything wrong to any animal.’
But RSPCA inspector Gary Palmer, who took the fox away on January 30, said she was a ‘pitiful sight’, ‘cowering’ at the back of a pen in the shed.
The vixen was returned to the wild two months later. Kevin Campbell, prosecuting, told the court the fox was kept in a ‘very small part of a shed’ and was frightened.
He said: ‘The fox clearly was not thriving. Its suffering was both physical and psychological. Foxes are sociable animals. It was living life not displaying fox-type behaviours.
‘It would have had removed from it the ability to hunt and to scavenge.’
Vet Michaela Wright said: ‘There was no means for this animal to have any mental stimulation – nothing for her to do. She was in a boring little shed.’
But Mr Myers, from Darlington, insisted that if the fox had ‘shown any stress’ towards him he would have ‘let it go like I did the others’.
Speaking of the RSPCA, he said: ‘They want to be spending their money on saving animals instead of bringing me here.
‘The only thing I am guilty of is that its nails were grown. Taking this to court was a waste of money. They should be spending it on proper cruelty cases.’
‘This was a waste of money’