The article says they are digging barrows. I can understand that when a company spends an exorbitant amount of money on a building with a roof garden and the costs of ongoing maintenance they are not happy it is being dug up, especially if they are digging down to the water barrier.
On the other hand I think it is pretty cool to have foxes on the roof.
Foxes, pigeons, rats etc are generally described as vermin yet they perform vital ecological functions and are somehow maligned for performing it.
They are scavengers (int al). They help keep the place cleaner in return for a small amount of crap and some extra disease vectors.
What I'd really like to hear is that a bunch of clever kids at Google realise that a city has an ecology all of its own and that they need to fit into it and not the other way around. If they have managed to attract foxes then make the best of it.
I wonder if there are there any Plane trees on it?
You might not like what they are working on or towards but a big old firm like Google has a lot of talent, bought and paid for, on board. Its a vast organisation and therefore will, even by accident, have lots of talented employees. They certainly have plenty of dosh to entice the "best".
I call them "kids" out of habit. I'm 54, so that is probably mostly fair and unfair at the same time - sue me.
> can understand that when a company spends an exorbitant amount of money on a building with a roof garden and the costs of ongoing maintenance they are not happy it is being dug up
The point of the roof garden is to create a delightful space. Just give the foxes their rabies shots and count your lucky stars that you got such an attraction.
I don't understand why this is a problem.
The roof is surely occupied by birds, rats, and mice.
Is the roof designed to include the natural world or not?
Another possible interpretation is that the grounds are laid out such that rainfall doesn't cause the roof's soil to erode and wash off.
(This is without any positive or negative value judgement, just an observation that we don't have to reach for "it needs to look pretty" to explain why having foxes on the roof isn't ideal.)
I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on this project in particular, just to note that while we often expect nature to conform to our specifications, it may have other ideas…
It's karma, for Google effectively seizing the beloved public roof garden in Cambridge (USA), for their offices.
Now the 'secret garden' refuge of stressed MIT students, office workers, and locals... has shrunk, and been re-landscaped, as a kinda creepy Google-style nano-campus party roof deck, which feels like you're trespassing, and you're the view for their windows and the new surveillance cameras.
On grand scale -- it's possible. But try to live in harmony in a shared space with a wild fox or a wolf. Not good for you, not for the sentient creatures.
I used to have a fox regularly lounging in my gazebo right outside my office window in South London. He didn't care about me unless I opened the door (at which point he would wander off), and didn't bother me at all. It was not a problem beyond a bit of fur on one of the pillows that he liked to sleep on.
I live in harmony near lots of wild things, including some foxes. They stay on the outside of my house and I stay on the inside. It's not "perfect" but it works pretty well.
Just shoot them. It may sound incredible to brits but that's actually legal.
I assume,
based on no evidence that foxes keep down the rat population. I see far more foxes then rats. Also they cause less problems then rats so i tolerate them.
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