As a young lad working out on the airfield at Heathrow and being very keen, I got out of the Landrover to pick up some FOD on the top of a light fitting. It was the most evil-smalling, sticky yukky stuff I had hereto encountered. My amused more experienced colleague told me that it was fox poo and not really a hazard. It took some while to wash it off. Lesson learned!
On another occasion, we recovered the body of a fox that had been run over. We slung it in the back of the Landrover, again, very whiffy!
We usually 'dispatched' injured foxes as they don't recover well from any kind of injury, becoming gangrenous very quickly. Apparently for this reason, foxes don't generally survive beyond a few years.
The ones that are alive and well can be a right pain to chase away, they just turn around and seem to be mocking us, before trotting away into the darkness. We felt duty bound to attend when ATC said a fox had been reported by an aircraft but so long as it wasn't in the vicinity of the runways, we were content. They might even have had a purpose, getting rid of the rabbits that ate through the lighting cables. How did we know that was happening? When the engineers excavated a cable fault, you'd sometimes see a dead rabbit at the break...
Happy days 40 years ago, Checker and Seagull for those familiar with the callsigns.
TOO