Reading Wendy Taylor’s scathing attack on The Argus for publishing a photo of someone hand-feeding a fox (Letters, January 31), I am reminded of what I put out on the supper table (the patio) this evening for my resident foxes.

1. For starters. Two lightly-boiled eggs with buttered bread (cut into soldiers).

2. Main course. Mixed grill consisting of chicken carcass, leg of lamb (with mint sauce), pork sausages and a handful of mixer biscuit.

3. Sweet. Rice pudding with a touch of cream (single).

Tomorrow they will be dining on a home-made curry.

As for the rats that Wendy says will be attracted to food that I put out, suffice to say I have no rats on my patch because they all died waiting for the foxes that I feed to leave them a crumb behind.

Make no mistake, vermin out my way consists mainly of the two-legged variety: the take-away types who throw fast food packaging and the food they can’t finish eating into the street.

Added to this are the two-legged vermin who in summer camp out on Southwick Hill leaving behind their throw-away tents, empty booze bottles, exhausted barbeques and all manner of other indescribable filth. In the process they badly injure the cattle grazing on the hill belonging to Mile Oak farm, as was the case last year.

Ms Taylor, it is the urban lout you should be concerned with, not the urban fox.

Dave Bonwick
Oakdene Close, Portslade

Wendy Taylor criticises me for feeding a fox by hand on my “patio or decking”.

The photo was actually taken on the pavement at the front of my house.

She also says that this kind of stupid behaviour will encourage the fox to enter my house in search of more hand-outs. I’m sure my Great Dane dogs wouldn’t tolerate foxes encroaching my securely fenced garden, and positive they wouldn’t want them as housemates either.

Graham Taylor
Uplands Road, Brighton