Foxes ....
Foxes have overrun many neighborhoods in England, by "neighborhoods" I am not excluding London proper!! My husbands family still lives there and they have a Fox problem. They have two small (tiny) dogs and ... a chicken. I have no idea WHY they have a chicken, it's not for eggs or soup ... it's just something that Hannah (oldest daughter) wanted and therefore got. The chicken has a coop of sorts in the back garden. The coop is a box on the ground with a long "run" made of a wood frame covered with screening (another story about the screening below!!). Nothing that can keep a fox out certainly, so the box has a closeable flap to keep the chicken safe at night. One year we were there Christmas day and as we pulled up we saw a fox run across the street toward their house - broad daylight. We hurried over and checked the yard - no fox. We told the family so they could make sure the dogs were not let out unattended and told Hannah to lock up the chicken. Did she? No. SHE BROUGHT THE CHICKEN IN THE HOUSE!!! Here we are eating Christmas dinner and there is a chicken walking around the house making itself right at home. Really threw me for a loop, and PO'd my husband off to no end that there was a chicken walking around the house - pooping where and when it wanted to poop (note: when Hannah had a baby the following year he put his foot down and told Hannah about all the nasty things a baby can pick up from close proximity to chickens/chicken poop and the chicken mysteriously disappeared, it wasn't a Fox (just a foxy grandpa)). Chickens in the house ... that's just plain wrong.
The screening. Now this is weird but in England it's rare to find a window that has a screen on it. I know!!! It's not like it's rocket science or anything!! Seriously ... if they want to open their windows - the windows are truely OPEN and if they want their windows open in the evening and they want to have a light on - it's an invitation for every bug in the county to come indoors to live. Hannah had been complaining that they liked the windows open on cool nights but because of the families odd working hours *someone* was always awake so therefore there was always a light on somewhere and the result was flying insects at night. So when Hannah visited us one year we bought a large roll of screening for her to take home (the kids always come with empty luggage), enough to cover all three of the kids bedroom windows and possibly the kitchen (they rarely open the living room widows). You guessed it ... it became the chicken coop. We told Hannah to look for more screening on Ebay!!! They still don't have screens and this was ... 4 years or so ago.