Motoring
NOT SO FANTASTIC MR FOX
My nephew Ben, a teacher, lives in a quiet block of flats in south London, with safe, on-road parking. Or so he thought until he came out one morning to find all four tyres of his VW Polo flat.
He assumed it was tyre-slashing by vandals and resignedly rang a tyre outfit, which despatched a man with a van and £200-plus of new rubber.
Meanwhile, a woman from a neighbouring flat came out and said she had been woken in the night by his car alarm and had looked out of the window to see the car’s lights flashing and a fox running round it in an excited state.
When the tyre man arrived, he examined the damage and diagnosed fox. Tyre-slashers, he said, tend to slash near the top of a tyre – after all, why get down on your knees to slash the bottom when, with a stoop while walking past, you can do the top? The damage on all four of Ben’s tyres was at the bottom. What’s more, the holes in the sidewalls weren’t the fairly straight lines made by a blade but the rather more jagged punctures produced by gnawing. That and witness evidence was enough to have Mr Tod convicted, in absentia, as usual.
Web research by Ben’s mum into Mr Tod’s criminal record soon unearthed a Daily Mail account of a similar outrage a few years ago in Dartford, Kent. Three foxes were seen on CCTV attacking a Renault, relenting only when startled by the hiss of air from the tyres.
Why do they do it? Does the warmth of a recently used tyre suggest the body heat of a potential victim? The Renault had been driven recently, but Ben’s Polo had not moved for well over eight hours, by which time any residual heat should have evaporated. Or do they find the smell of newish rubber enticing? I do; I always hang around the workshop when having new tyres fitted, savouring the aroma.
Or could it be that the car had driven over an abandoned pizza or someone’s fish and chips on the way home? Except that doing it with all four wheels would take deliberate manoeuvring. And if it is heat or the allure of rubber that attracts foxes, why doesn’t it happen more often?
After all, there’s no shortage of them in urban areas – I saw one cross Parliament Square a couple of years ago – although numbers in the country are said to be falling (perhaps because of the recent decline in rabbits?).
Reports of animal damage to cars more often feature mice, which find plenty of wires and hoses to nibble beneath the bonnet in a dark, warm garage. A blackbird once nested briefly in my tractor and most of us have seen film footage of monkeys in game reserves entertaining themselves by pulling off aerials, windscreen wipers and so on.
In rural parts, deer can pose a danger to cars and drivers alike. I knew a farmer who was killed when a fallow deer was struck by an oncoming car and propelled through his windscreen. Swerving to avoid dogs, cats, pheasants, foxes and badgers probably accounts for many unreported minor collisions. Squashed hedgehogs are no longer a common sight – sadly because there aren’t enough to be squashed, their place taken by their only predator, the now-protected badger.
So what can be done about Mr Tod’s fondness for tyres? Not much unless manufacturers alter the rubber compound to change the taste. But that might change the smell too and I, for one, would regret that.