It`s four in the morning and the foxes have woken the dog which in turn has the domino effect and woken the wife and also myself. 

I just wonder how many times this is being repeated throughout the London boroughs and how many others are suffering sleep deprivation due to howling dogs and the ever increasing number of invading foxes?

The council seem powerless in doing anything about the problem and it is a problem, and one that seems to be getting worse each year. 

With foxes being classed as a 'pest' the only way to legally get rid of them is to shoot them, even if they have first been trapped in a cage trap. It sounds harsh I know, but that`s the law.

The cause of the problem is simply people feeding them. What these people do not realise, or if they do they fail to recognise, is that the urban fox carries diseases that other pets can catch. 

Children playing in gardens during the summer can also come in contact with their `scats` (droppings) and some dogs, like my own seem, to relish also in rolling in this. 

Even if you dismiss the 'rogue fox' that has been reported to come into your home and snap at you or bite your child, a fox is a wild animal and forever will remain so and therefore should belong out there, in the wild, and not in people's back gardens.

I am a shooting man and have been for over 50 years. I am looking at two lying in the garden that I shot just a short while ago and which I will dispose of shortly. These are just two of six I have shot this year in my back garden and last year I had to eliminate no less than ten. Three of my neighbours know that I shoot and all of them asked me discreetly to reduce the numbers for various reasons, one saying that he was afraid to let his little girl play in the garden and another saying that his wife could not even put out washing on the line, she was scared of the fox that was out there.

I do not relish shooting foxes and would much prefer to watch them in the wild playing with their cubs, as I have done in years past but with statistics saying that we now have 16 to the square mile in town, underestimated to my way of thinking, then shooting them and educating people not to feed them seems to be about the only option.

Name and address supplied, Chingford