ROGER Tucker does not approve of folk who “put foxes on pedestals” (Oxford Mail, June 22). By this I assume he means those people who have the modicum of intelligence required to understand their behaviour, see beyond the hackneyed cliché of the fox killing the chickens, and appreciate their intense beauty and captivating nature.

Foxes do nothing “wantonly”, as Mr Tucker claims. It is not in any wild animal’s interest to waste precious energy when it has to survive (unlike pampered humans) purely on its wits and agility.

Foxes certainly panic when they get into a hen house and the birds all around are flapping wildly, and it snaps all around as a consequence. The moral of that is, make sure your hens are in fox-proof roosts. Simple.

Foxes are one of the most persecuted of all animals. They are snared, they are incarcerated in tiny wire cages and then electrocuted (via a probe inserted into the anus) so that brainless people can wear clothes made out of their fur.

Packs of large killer dogs are set onto them so that they may be run to exhaustion and the dogs can rip open their bellies and disembowel them. They are also dazzled by powerful lamps so that morons with guns can shoot them, or send lurchers running down the beam to savage them.

Other documented hideous acts against them include cubs being set on fire, cubs being decapitated, a petrified fox being put into a cage with a pit bull terrier (which took 10 minutes to maul it to death), and foxes hung by their necks from tree branches.

So how come Mr Tucker sees the fox, rather than the barbaric human, as unfit to be “put on a pedestal”?

PENNY LITTLE, Back Way, Great Haseley