The foxes and the cherries

05/19/2011 - 04:38

An Aesops fables moment (OK I know that was grapes....) I went down to check on our large cherry tree, bent over with the weight of cherries this year and surprised two large adult foxes doing the same thing. Lying in the long grass just out of reach of the branches, not sure who was the most surprised, one of those magic "Italy moments", they are welcome to the cherries as long as they keep away from the chicken coop. Which now resembles Fort Knox.!

Topic

Gardening

Comment

So they do .........

it's suprising how many wild animals eat fruit.Foxes love cherries also grapes,figs and apparently cachi.when we had a small vinyard the bottom grapoli were regularly cleaned by foxes and badgers.last year i placed a line of cachi on top of the thermic cover to our iacuzzi to mature sheltered from birds/hornets and so on, after a few days i saw there were only a couple left ,initially i presumed my neighbour had taken some for his wife ...no problem i thought..then the next day there were none when i went close up there was a "neat "fox shit left on the cover ...must have thought it was christmas!..

Foxes and Badgers love cherries, I have often seen them feasting on windfalls. As it is a great source of sugar (energy) with little expenditure in energy for them; it provides an easy meal until something else turns up.

I'm fascinated by hearing that foxes lurk about waiting for cherries and other windfalls. Maybe they have clocked the price being asked in the supermarkets - this year at the moment cherries are €9.95 a kilo. Wow, they are pulling my leg - all my friends with cherry trees are propping up the overladen branches, and cannot give the fruit away!