The public display of a dead animal is usually met with horror or grief – but the discovery of a carcass lying inside a Woolworths trolley has sparked calls for celebration.
In a photo posted to social media, several supermarket trolleys can be seen pushed together next to a fence.
The body of a fox is lying among Coke cans and discarded coffee cups inside a shallow Woolworths trolley.
“Is this a Woolworths only item or will Coles bring out an equivalent?” the person who posted the photo to Reddit quipped.
“I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw it,” they added in the comments.
The post was quickly flooded with comments, and while some were disturbed at the sight of the dead animal, many were rejoicing over the fox’s death.
“How sad,” one person wrote.
“Not sad!” someone else said. “Every dead fox is many native animals saved. A dead fox should be celebrated.”
“In Australia the only good fox is a dead fox,” another commenter agreed.
“Horribly destructive pests in Australia, it’s better off all around that they’re dead,” someone else said.
‘Any animal’s death is sad’
Liam Barwick from Melbourne Hunt Saboteurs said any loss of life due to suspected human intervention is “genuinely sad”.
“The takeaway from this is that someone can hold life so cheaply,” he told Yahoo News Australia, believing that there could be two foxes in the photo.
“I think that’s really sad to see them dumped in a trolley like that. Where is the line drawn for the people or persons who did that?”
While Mr Barwick said there’s no denying the “devastating impact” the fox has had on the native environment, he made a comparison to the extinct Thylacine.
“We don’t care for our native apex predators, yet when the balance is thrown out and the fox steps into a role that was vacant, we blame the fox instead of looking at ourselves as the perpetrator.
“Without a doubt the fox is an introduced species but so are sheep, chickens, cows, goats. The issue with the fox is the fox has managed to not be deemed a profitable source.”
Bounty reward for fox scalps in Victoria
It is estimated foxes and cats kill over 2.6 billion creatures a year in Australia.
Researchers at Charles Darwin University studied the diet of foxes and found they were commonly consuming native animals including rodents, possums, gliders and macropods, along with feral creatures like rabbits, hares, rats, mice and livestock.
Bandicoots, bilbies, bats, monotremes, moles, numbats, cats and an odd assortment of other species made up less than 30 per cent of their diet.
In Victoria, foxes and wild dogs are declared pest animals and ‘management’ by the local landowners is allowed.
Fox scalps can be exchanged for $10 each, though you must meet eligibility requirements to take part in the bounty reward program.
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