There's nothing much worse than someone saying "I told you so" – I never do it myself. It's mostly done with an element of hindsight wrapped in for good measure.

But then I clearly live my life to much higher standards than most people. I often get asked what it's like to be perfect and to be honest, you just have to get used to it.

But (there's always a but and here it is) I do remember writing here quite clearly, many months ago, and I get no pleasure out of this, that "it is only a matter of time before a child is killed by an urban fox".

I've deliberately left the subject for a couple weeks, but just how close was that? So, here I go again, banging on about animals and, in particular, their numbers and control.

What would make a fox bold enough to go upstairs in someone's house and do that? Certainly familiarity, almost just as certainly a boldness driven by hunger.

If foxes are going to live in urban areas and their population escalates, then as always, competition for food will become an issue. I suspect that urban pest control people will be very busy catching foxes from now on.

I don't doubt that many of these foxes will end up in the countryside, bringing a new meaning to "escape to the country".

Few of them, successfully, and thankfully, adjust to a lifestyle where they have to scavenge and hunt in a different environment – which is a form of cruelty in itself.

Remnants of takeaway meals and kitchen waste in bin bags are less available in a rural environment and there is more competition to scavenge in a rural food chain.

The proper place for a fox is in the countryside stalking rabbit or dispatching a wounded pheasant. If it lives in a town it is nothing more than a wild dog and needs controlling.

It's all very well getting excited about the litter of cubs being reared under the garden shed but there is a downside to it. The downside in this case crept up the stairs and attacked two babies.

We are led to believe that the parents of these two babies have been vilified by animal rights activists, who are more concerned with the welfare of the fox. True or not, it wouldn't surprise me. Too many animals of any species leads to problems – man needs to exercise balanced control, as he always has done. Sometimes he has achieved extinction and I'm not advocating that, because that isn't balance either.

On a similar vein, I have a friend who gives of her time to an animal refuge. They are mostly concerned with dogs and cats and she showed me around one day.

She had been telling me for some time that they had a problem with the number of dogs that were of the bull terrier type. Breed enthusiasts of the Staffordshire bull terrier, for example, get very sensitive about this sort of comment and I think that's reasonable, because I know what "Staffies" look like and there were none of these in the refuge. These were much taller dogs, similar to American pit bulls.

Unfortunately, if you are a five-foot-six hoodie who makes ends meet by selling a few drugs, it's a job to look "hard". Even a few tattoos and a piercing or two won't do it. What will do it is a bull terrier-type dog on a chain, trained to be aggressive.

They have become the preferred accessory of this type of person and are kept in small houses and small gardens and just like the fox I referred to earlier, we regularly read about these sorts of dogs when things go wrong.

The dogs themselves are powerful and wedge shaped, with the wide bit of the wedge at the front. The arse end seems to go to a point. The front end is all mouth and teeth and more closely resembles a great white shark.

My friend tells me that people with small children regularly come to the refuge looking for a pit.

Mum and Dad say: "Can we have this one?" and she looks at Mum and Dad and looks at the two toddlers they have with them and she looks back at Mum and Dad and she wonders if they ever read the papers.

■ It's that time of year again. Time to go topping, although on this farm it should be called docking.

I've got the worst/best crop of docks I've ever had and it's on the side of the road!

Not far from where I am presently topping is a young buzzard. I assume that he's a young bird (just as I assume he's a he) because he's trying to catch something that I have disturbed.

He's squatting down on the floor with his wings outspread and making repeated grabs for whatever it is he's trying to catch. He's unsuccessful so far and after each fruitless grab he sits there with his head first on one side and then the other as he tries to locate his quarry, which is obviously hiding in the vegetation that I have recently topped.

But it won't escape, whatever it is, because here walking across the field comes Mr Carrion Crow.

Looking very important, in his black tail coat, he must be the avian equivalent of the Fat Controller.

He walks across the field totally unhurried, some 50 yards, and heads straight for the buzzard, obviously aware of just what is going on.

When he's three yards away the buzzard bottles it and flaps off to sit on the hedge.

Without seeming to pause the carrion crow walks up to the exact spot and with one stab of his beak he has whatever it is and flies away with it in his beak.

I can't see what it is because I don't have my glasses with me; I can never find them in the house, so why would I take them on the tractor?

The buzzard returns and alights where he was before. He puts his head on one side again but he's wasting his time. There's nothing in it for him now – bit like farming.