Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and it's time for a true story. True Stories are episodes that, as you may have guessed, involve me telling a true story. Now today this story belongs to me, but I'm also willing to tell other people's true stories. So if you have an interesting story, whether it's funny, disgusting, frightening, sad, or exciting, then feel free to put pen to paper or to type your story out and send it over to me at hello@englishlikeanative.co.uk. Just title it"True Story". And if your story intrigues me, then I might share it. Now today's story is called A Shocking Discovery. And I'm afraid to say this is a story that's quite sad and a little bit morbid. So if you're feeling delicate, if you are upset by hearing about dead animals, then this is not the episode for you. So maybe just skip through to another episode. There are over 350 episodes now. So, I'm sure there's something else that would suit your ears and not bring you down. My intention is not to bring you down, but to give you a variety of language, phrases, and listening experiences. So yes, today I'm going to share with you something that rocked me, rocked my core, something that upset me greatly, but I'm going to try and do it in a very sympathetic way. So if you're ready, let's start today's true story. Now, this is something that actually happened to me yesterday. A very sad story. As you know, I have a relatively large garden and in my garden, I have many little visitors. We have many of the neighbourhood cats coming in and out. We have lots of birds, parrots and tits and wood pigeons. We even have endangered species. The stag beetle tends to fly in every now and again. We also have a family of foxes and other local foxes that come through my garden on a daily basis. Now recently, our resident foxes had a litter. And there were lots of little pups running around the garden and making a home under our decking. And it was delightful watching them emerge for the first time and start to grow. Now, these pups are quite big now. I say pups, they're cubs. We call them fox cubs, not pups. But the fox cubs are adolescents now. They're teenagers in fox terms. They are big boys, big girls probably. I don't know the sex. I assume they're all boys, but they're not, of course. So, we see them running around and it's lovely. I even feel like I'm quite close to one of the foxes because I have fed him on a number of occasions when he's looked a little skinny and a bit hungry. He even comes to my door and begs for food. So he has this little way of telling me that he's hungry and I sneak food out to him. And he will happily let me sit in the garden about half a metre away from him. And it's lovely. Anyway. Yesterday I came out of my back door and entered the garden and I'm walking down the garden past the pond and I notice that the pond weed has all been disturbed. So the pond at the moment is full of pond weed. So this weed that grows very fast. We don't have any fish anymore because the heron ate them all. And we are trying to decide what to do with the pond. So at the moment we have a few water lilies and other water plants, but the weed is taking over. Now I noticed that it all being disturbed because I'd been trying to fish it out for a while, but it'd all been disturbed. So I had a closer look. I thought what's going on in there. And I saw that the filter and some of the baskets that hold the plants had been turned over and I was like,"Oh, what's happened there? That's unusual." And so I start walking along the pond to try and figure out what's happened. And as I walk along, I realised that actually the whole pond is quite murky like something's really got into the pond and disturbed it. And I start to get this sinking feeling. Something was definitely off. Something was not right. And as I walk around to the far end of the pond, I make the shocking discovery. I let out an audible gasp. There at the bottom of the pond, at the far end, was a little fox. I feel quite sad telling you this story now. I broke down in tears. I broke down in tears and I sobbed for about 30 minutes. I was very upset. I actually was meant to film yesterday morning, and I couldn't because I had a very red and blotchy face, big puffy eyes, having cried so hard and so much. So, obviously this fox, I'm assuming because the entire pond was disturbed, I'm assuming the fox somehow fell in and drowned because of the signs of struggle. And I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I tried to lift him out but I couldn't. And so I decided I need to phone the council, because I don't really know how to dispose of a big animal like that. If we had a dead mouse or a dead squirrel or something like that, then I'd have a better idea of how to deal with it, but a fox is big, so I don't know how to deal with it. So, I decided I'm going to phone the council. Surely the council, as they collect our bins, will have rules about dead animals, because I'm sure you're not allowed to put dead animals into the garden waste bin. I'm sure that's the rule. And I'm sure that you're probably not supposed to put them into the general waste because of the smell of a decomposing carcass. Well, trying to find help from the council on how to dispose of a dead animal was like going on a wild goose chase. Yes, the council gave me the runaround. I spent 30 minutes waiting just to be answered, and then the chap who answered the phone to me basically told me it was not their responsibility. I was responsible. We couldn't put it in the bin. And he said the best option was to speak to his colleague in environmental. So he patches me through to environmental. I wait for another 10 minutes. Another chap answers and tells me he doesn't know why I've been patched through to him because it's not his responsibility, it's not environmental's responsibility, they don't deal with dead foxes on private property. Had it been out on the street or in a public area, then that's for the council to deal with, but otherwise it's not their problem. And so I said,"Well, what am I supposed to do? What is the answer here?" And he said,"I don't know, here's a number for the RSPCA." And the RSPCA is a big organisation within the UK. It's a charity that services, looks after, sick and injured animals, whether they are domestic or wild, they can help. If you notice an animal being mistreated or neglected or having been abandoned on hot days, if a dog has been left in a hot car and the windows are shut, then it's the RSPCA that you call. You let them know that you're concerned about an animal's welfare and they will sort it out and they can prosecute owners for neglect. So they're quite an important body for animal welfare within the UK. So I phoned them up. And I'm greeted with an automated message to try and filter my call to the right person. But all the options say nothing about dead animals. So I put the phone down and I go to the website. The website again says nothing about what to do with a dead animal in your garden. So, I phone them again. And I'm very cheeky this time. I press a number to take me through to an officer, even though the option was,"Have you got an injured animal in your garden?" of course, this animal isn't injured. This animal is deceased. He's no longer with us, but I needed to speak to somebody. So, I speak to a lady and she's lovely. She's very sympathetic to the issue that I'm facing now. But again, she said,"It's not our responsibility. We don't come around and take away dead animals if they're in your garden. The council should deal with it." I said,"But the council won't deal with it." And she said,"Then I can't help you. I'm really sorry. The best thing you can do is phone the council back and ask them what you're supposed to do with it." Now, the other option is to hire a private company to come around, but that's around£90 to£100, which is a lot of money. Money that I don't really have to hand. So the only option that there is is to put his poor little body into the main waste disposal bin to go to a landfill. There is also the suggestion of burying him, however, foxes have this habit of digging up animals that have been buried. So you have to dig down deep. You have to make the grave, the burial site, very deep. The suggestion is that you cover them in lime, so that they don't smell, I guess, so there's no scent. And then, hope that the foxes can't detect the animal and dig it up. Unfortunately, my garden doesn't really have an area which can be easily dug up. So that's not an option for us. The problem with not dealing with it quickly is that foxes carry all kinds of bacteria and I certainly can't leave them in the pond because, well, lots of animals drink from the pond and you don't want a decomposing corpse in there, contaminating the water. So, I'm going to place him in the bin and send him off to landfill with a very heavy heart and I've decided after this incident that we are draining the pond. We're going to drain all the water out, take out the plants, put them in a small container and we're going to fill the pond in with soil and plant lavender for the bees. That's my solution. That's the outcome of a very, very sad and traumatic event. Ahh, so I'm hoping that this hasn't really upset you. I'm hoping that you've just used this as an opportunity to hear some varied vocabulary on a slightly morbid subject. And I also hope that you've never had to deal with this kind of situation yourself, because it's really not nice. To be honest, the way I reacted to the whole incident almost felt the same as when I've lost a pet. I feel like that's the kind of connection I have with these foxes. I feel like, you know, I sometimes feed them. I look out for them. I try to get close to them. Within reason, they are wild animals. It's been very sad. It's awful losing an animal, losing a pet, even though they're not my pets. But I think what upset me the most is just knowing that it was a highly preventable incident. If I had been home, if I had heard the fox going into the water, I would have been there and done everything in my power to get him out. Unfortunately, he's met his end. I wasn't there. So, I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Pond will be drained, no more water, and we'll put water out, drinking water, at a safe depth so that nothing can drown in it. Okay, so with a heavy heart, I'm going to close down this episode. Thank you for listening, and the next episode will be much lighter, I promise. Until next time, take very good care, and goodbye.