Last December, a leading lawyer gave a masterclass in how not to get rid of foxes in your garden. As he nursed his Boxing Day hang­over, Jolyon Maugham QC spotted one tangled up in the netting protecting the chicken run at his London home. He ran outside with a baseball bat and, wearing only his wife’s “too-small green kimono”, clubbed it to death. Now, I can’t condone Maugham’s “tooth-and-claw experience” – I’m a squeamish vegan – but after a lengthy war of attrition with urban foxery, I sympathise with his plight. The blighters that come into my east London “yarden” really are a nuisance. Some time ago, a family of four set up home in my neighbourhood, and now regularly pop by during their nightly constitutional along adjoining garden fences, wreaking all shades of havoc. They churn the soil in my raised beds, they snuffle up bulbs, they crush tender spring growth. Their frolicking has left young tree roots exposed and all but shredded the Trachelospermum jasminoides I got going last year....