Instinct to kill (From York Press)

Instinct to kill

1:50pm Thursday 10th May 2007 in Letters By Reader's letter

I SEE Mrs Causnett is concerned about the supposed cruelties of fox hunting (Does the hunt block bolt-holes for foxes?, Letters, The Press, May 8).

I can assure Mrs Causnett that foxes do not feel pain as we humans do, their nervous system could not support it.

But then neither do they have a sense of cruelty or they would not kill as wantonly or wastefully as they do.

But then killing is their game. Just as a cat likes to play with a mouse that it has caught, so a fox likes to kill.

Now hunting has gone, what kind of an end can the vast majority of foxes look forward to?

I'm sorry to say that they do not die in a warm bed surrounded by their loved ones.

Those that do not die from disease, to which they are prone, will, after three or four years, get too slow to catch their prey.

They will then slowly starve to death.

However, some time before they go, other animals and insects will have found them and started to eat them.

Man can be cruel but nature is without compassion. What price "a quick tearing to bits by hounds" now?

Having seen what foxes do, I am always bemused by the outrage that their killing causes.

Even the most rabid animal societies admit that they must be controlled.

I suppose the reason is that they look so nice on Christmas cards.

Jeremy D Fox, Malton Avenue, York.