Stephen,

Having seen a chased and cornered fox react, I have great difficulty in believeing that it believes it will be "a relief" to die. But I am unable to enter a fox's consciousness, so I don't know for sure. Neither do you.

Good god, you don't know for sure? And you have never read of the occasions, where the fox actually has died of exhastion in the middle of the hunt, have you? OK, I might have exaggerated to say that the death is a relief every time, but it can be at a certain point. Or do you deny the possibility of that? You can't, since you wrote, that you cannot enter a fox's consciousness, and yet you saw it important to write that I was ignorant. Why?

Still, be it the whole hunt that is cruel in it's very means of doing it, be the end a relief or whatever, I find it cruel and that was my very point. You obviously missed it, but it does not change, no matter how you rip my posting apart, rise red herrings and take parts of sentences from their context. I find it cruel, and it's my right. Just like you have the right to think it is a "fun day out".

Ritva