Fitzroy, for the few who don’t know the place, adjoins Melbourne city. It’s close enough to walk from town to Brunswick Street, the long, main, café-lined thoroughfare that is the main road. A relic of the Victorian era, its fashionable grunge, its terrace houses and shops suggests the cultural and economic mix that makes this a vital place to live. Brunswick Street is Sydney’s King Street, Newtown, only done better. It is Brisbane’s main street West End, only so much longer and more diverse.

It is hard to imagine foxes in Fitzroy. Where would they live? Why wouldn’t they be flattened by cars? Yet they are a presence in our cities.

My friend. Doug, found this out the hard way at home in Marrickville, an old suburb in Sydney’s Inner West. He woke one morning to find his chooks had been killed by some vulpine creature during the night. Foxes, he guessed, realising that they could move from a nearby area of rocky bushland along the open drain that runs beside his house. From here they could easily access his chook pen.

The destruction of his flock was a protracted process. After one nocturnal attack he found the heads had been removed from his chooks as if some animal had bitten them off. He stood in the pen and speculated. Cats? No, chooks are too large to be intimidated by cats. Goanna? Not here, he thought. Powerful owl? He entertained that one awhile before discarding it in favour of a fox. His quail suffered a similar fate. Coincidentally at a later time, so did the chicken population at Randwick Community Organic Garden.

Foxes were fixed as the likely culprit in Doug’s mind when, up and about outside at 2am for some reason, he saw one of the vulpine beasts wandering nonchalantly down the road. For some years now, Doug hasn’t been game to replace his flock. Why feed the local wildlife, he asks.