Most likely not being that it's the UK ..................
Fox attack: the far from fantastic Mr FoxAs yet another baby recovers from a vicious attack, experts insist the problem lies not with the animal but the humans who encourage it
Crossing boundaries: foxes moved into urban areas in the Thirties Photo: GETTYBy Sarah Rainey
Telegraph.uk
11 Feb 2013
On Sunday February 3, Paul Dolan posted a photograph of his five-week-old son, Denny, on Facebook. Sitting in a turquoise baby bouncer, a grin across his podgy pink cheeks, his twinkling eyes are transfixed on something in the distance. “Mummy and Daddy love me” reads the loopy lettering on his babygro.
Four days later, the proud father uploaded another photograph of his son. Underneath the words “My poor boy”, this picture is strikingly different. Denny lies in a hospital bed. Reaching towards the camera, his left hand is wrapped in a thick bandage. There is no smile on his face; instead, red scratches and bumps cover his tiny head. His eyes are closed, the left lid swollen by a purple bruise.
Denny Dolan was rushed to hospital last week after being mauled by a fox, which reportedly ripped off his finger and tried to drag him on to the street. The animal is believed to have got into the family home in Bromley, south-east London, through a broken back door, climbed into Denny’s cot in the living room and launched the vicious attack. His 28-year-old mother, Hayley Banks Cawley, says she had to kick the fox repeatedly to make it drop her baby from its bloodied jaws.
It took surgeons three hours to reattach Denny’s severed finger. This week, experts and concerned members of the public are trying to work out what – or who – is to blame for what happened. Some are calling for a cull of urban foxes to prevent future attacks. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has warned that the incident should be a “wake-up call” to the capital’s boroughs. “They must… try to understand why this is becoming such a problem and act quickly to sort it out,” he said yesterday.
Although experts point out that urban foxes rarely bite humans, Denny is the latest victim in a spate of attacks. In July 2010, nine-month-old twins Isabella and Lola Koupparis were savaged in their cots in Hackney, east London. The same month, three-year-old Jake Jermy was taken to hospital after being bitten by a fox at a party in Brighton, East Sussex. Four-year-old Jessica Brown from north London and 14-week-old Louis Day from Dartford in Kent suffered similar attacks in 2002 and 2003.
Foxes have lived in our towns and cities since the Thirties, when they started venturing into the suburbs, as planning encroached on their natural habitats. According to the University of Bristol’s Mammal Research Unit, there are approximately 33,000 urban foxes in Britain today. But only in the past decade have such attacks on humans, particularly infants, taken place. Clearly, something has changed to aggravate this previously peaceful coexistence – but what?
Specialists insist that a population increase is not the cause. “If anything, the number of urban foxes has gone down,” says wildlife expert John Bryant, who has been studying foxes for 15 years. “Almost all borough councils have wheelie bins, and that removes a huge food supply. There are also a lot of diseases and poisons around. Statistically, the chances of them attacking humans are basically zero. I’ve never come across an aggressive fox – it is just that they’re becoming bolder.”
Last year’s Channel Four study, Foxes Live, in which 10,000 people observed the habits of urban foxes, came to a similar conclusion. Sturdy wheelie bins and household recycling have put a stop to the ready availability of food waste that might have lured the creatures into gardens in the past. But litter remains a problem, as does people’s willingness to engage with, and hand-feed, wild foxes.
Terry Woods, co-founder of humane pest control company Fox-A-Gon, says wildlife programmes are to blame for the “boldness” foxes now exhibit. “Since shows like Springwatch, more people are interested in feeding foxes,” he explains. “Instinctively, they would pull away from humans. But if Mrs Jones starts putting out a bowl of dog food in her garden, over a period of time that fox will become more human-friendly. Then if Mrs Jones goes away on holiday, that fox will not differentiate between her patio door and the door at a different house.”
An increasing awareness of urban wildlife has changed our opinions about foxes, too. During Foxes Live, 1.5 per cent of people said they’d had a fox inside their homes, either invited or uninvited, and 86 per cent perceived them positively. In a poll on the Telegraph ’s website yesterday, 44 per cent of readers described foxes as “handsome and largely harmless creatures”.
While they may appear furry and friendly, red foxes are ultimately wild animals. Distantly related to dogs, they have 42 teeth and sharp, non‑retractable claws. “Problems occur when humans try to socialise them,” says John Davison, chief executive of the National Pest Technicians Association. “I have no doubt that someone in that area [Bromley] will have been feeding foxes, and that’s why this one was looking for food.”
Experts insist that it is not in foxes’ nature to prey on humans. Prof Stephen Harris, a specialist in urban foxes from the University of Bristol, says the creatures eat invertebrates, birds and food left out in gardens. “It’s not the foxes’ fault; it’s the humans’,” he said in an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday. Indeed, Davison suspects the latest attack may have been caused by a fox smelling food on the baby’s hands and “snatching” at it. “That’s how they feed – they crouch down and grab at the food with their mouths,” he explains.
No fox attack has ever caused a fatality in this country, but some believe it may only be a matter of time. So is a cull the solution? Foxes were first culled in this country in the Forties – and in some London boroughs into the early Eighties. But control never proved effective: whenever a fox was killed, another moved into the empty territory. Campaigners claim that 70 per cent of the population would have to be killed every year to reduce numbers. “A cull would be ridiculous – and unaffordable,” says Bryant. “Bromley, ironically, was the last council to abandon the cull and by the end it was costing £4,000 a fox.”
In Bromley this week, concerned friends and neighbours are scouring the streets for the fox that savaged Denny. The offending creature, a noticeably large fox, has reportedly been spotted skulking behind a car; and one neighbour claims to have seen 20 of the animals prowling nearby streets. Action will no doubt be taken. But will a witch-hunt help ease the family’s pain?
“Vilifying foxes is not the answer,” says Bryant. “Educating people – to deter foxes humanely, and to stop feeding them – is.”
