I have gone off wildlife. My garden has been commandeered by it.

Foxes have designated my garden chief repository, playground, supermarket and refuse tip.

Their muddy paw marks are all over the garden furniture and children's slide. My bird bidet has become their drinking hole and I found the ornamental bird which sat on its edge on the ground.

The next day, I found it half-way down the garden and on the next, it had disappeared altogether.

Apart from stealing a pair of garden gloves unwisely left out overnight, the foxes have brought gifts of neighbours' gardening gloves.

Presumably, as the family of three cubs grew up, there wasn't enough food to go round - the gloves (which were leather) were reduced to the occasional finger.

Add to this the various contents of neighbours' plastic refuse sacks, the fur coat, one hind leg of a rat and the neck and head of a collared dove and you begin to get some idea of the part of my gardening that horticultural college didn't prepare me for.

The plants have been flattened where I inadvertently planted them in the middle of the race-track and long-stalked flowers have had their heads snapped off.

Not content with this mayhem, the foxes have formed an alliance with the squirrels, who terrorise the upper levels of the garden and who pick the plums and throw them down to Reynard.

They make a great team when it comes to digging holes in the lawn. No problem, I thought - just fill in and re-seed in the autumn. I filled in the holes - all 13 of them - and seeded. Result? Nice new compost excited the foxes to dig a bit deeper.

I refilled and covered the holes with clay pots overnight, removing the pots in the daytime. Result? Enter the birds. They scattered the compost and enjoyed a two-course meal of slugs which had sheltered under the pots, with grass seed to follow.

This year, I wasn't as quick off the mark as I usually am and the wildlife got the eating apples, redcurrants and the raspberries. I hope whatever ate the gooseberries got bellyache.

In fact, the only produce I have had from the garden this year is tomatoes, I suspect only because nothing has yet worked out how to open the greenhouse door.

The grand finale was foxes peering in the kitchen door at lunchtime and two cats who stubbornly refuse to go out into their garden unless I chaperone them.

As I cannot always do this to order, I am getting through mountains of cat litter.

I am still a member of the local Wildlife Trust but only just. Have any other readers met the urban fox? And why have most people stopped using dustbins with secured lids?

-Mrs A Ginnings, Wilbury Crescent, Hove