Don't read this at your breakfast. "You were writing about foxes in a Dublin suburb" came the voice on the phone. "If it's south Dublin, especially, you want to be careful of your dog, if you have one. I've heard that the foxes in that area, especially on the lower slopes of the mountain, are rotten with mange." Then a sorry tale was told of a dog which caught a fox - and dutifully placed the corpse in front of the master's hall door. The corpse was almost hairless and covered with scabs and encrustations. It wasn't clear if the dog had been at close quarters long enough, for the mites which cause the disease to transfer to him, but in due course, a day or so, little bumps came up on his skin, and the dog and two others in the house, who might have been in contact, were rushed to the vet, where they were injected, put on pills, then thoroughly bathed or hosed down in some disinfectant solution. And kept in 12 hours.
Next day the owner got back three dogs, as it was put, "shampooed and smelling nice", and due, all three, for another injection in three weeks' time. As a precaution, all their bedding was destroyed and the area where they sleep disinfected and cleaned.
James Fairley in his invaluable Irish Beast Book - and he has made a special study of foxes - tells us that mange or scabies is caused by a tiny mite, less than half a millimetre long (sarcoptes scabiei) which is picked up by close contact with an infected fox. The female mite bores into the skin and lays eggs, giving rise to a second generation of mites, and so on. Then inflammation, overwhelming itch; and further damage is done by scratching, which removes hair and breaks the skin. Thus infections of other kinds come in.
Foxes with severe scabies, he writes, are "barely recognisable and a pitiful sight, almost hairless" and so in awful detail. Don't panic if you live in that district, but keep the dog away from night moving animals if you can. Fairley's book, revised edition published in 1984 by Blackstaff, deserves to be on everyone's shelf. And in hardback, you'll consult it so often.
And don't panic about foxes or badgers or wild cats in your garden. The mites can't leap onto a dog or cat that is kept inside at night. Yes, cats can get it too.