It was a warm Saturday evening and Nick and Pauline Koupparis left a door to their three-storey house open as they watched Britain's Got Talent on television. Shortly before 10pm, a curious fox padded into their home in Victoria Park, east London, and made its way upstairs, where their nine-month-old twins Lola and Isabella were asleep. The fox attacked the girls on their arms and faces. When Pauline heard the crying, she rushed upstairs. "I went into the room and I saw some blood on Isabella's cot," she said yesterday. "I thought she'd had a nosebleed. I put on the light and I saw a fox and it wasn't even scared of me, it just looked me straight in the eye."
As the children were treated in hospital, where they were in a serious but stable condition, the shocking story spread around the globe, triggering a new panic about urban foxes. Police told local residents they should keep their doors closed in hot weather for their own safety. Neighbours spoke of how foxes creep not merely into their gardens but into their kitchens and living rooms. A fox trap was set; one fox has already been killed.
"Something should be done about them. I would love to get them out of here. They're really a nuisance and a danger," said one neighbour, Michael Parra. "I think the foxes are getting bolder. They almost go up to you. I've got fearful myself. They've gone towards my dog too."
Everyone who lives in a major city seems to agree they see more foxes than ever and these creatures are becoming bolder. Are we overrun with a new breed of fearless urban fox? Are these scruffy-looking, bin-raiding, lawn-wrecking monsters developing different patterns of behaviour to their fluffier, warier country cousins? Are they becoming more aggressive? And if so, what should be done?
A native mammal with little to fear from anything much except man, Vulpes vulpes has long fascinated and repelled us, attracting all kinds of fairytales and anthropomorphisms, from Reynard the fox in the Canterbury Tales to Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox. Hunting foxes with horses and hounds was outlawed in England and Wales in 2005 and the only piece of animal welfare legislation mooted by the Conservatives is a bill to bring it back. It is well known that David Cameron has enjoyed days out with the hunt. It is less understood that hunters imported thousands of foxes from Europe to lowland areas in the 18th century to improve their sport.
Foxes moved into cities in the 1930s and for four decades, until the 1980s, local authorities shot and trapped foxes in London in an attempt to exterminate them. This failed. By the 1980s there were an estimated 33,000 adult foxes in urban areas. Scientists believe populations have not risen significantly since. The highest densities of foxes are now found in cities but the Veterinary Association for Wildlife Management believes urban foxes still account for only 14% of the total population.
Blood-curdling screams
Our perception that we are surrounded by more of them than ever is probably mistaken. Foxes, we believe, are cunning and fearless; they hunt in wolf-like packs, kill for fun and are the size of a burly dog. We have created a stereotype of the urban fox: while rural foxes are bushy-tailed red beauties, the city dweller is a mangy, malnourished beast that emits blood-curdling screams all night.
All these views are wrong, according to Bristol University's Mammal Research Unit, led by Professor Stephen Harris, the pioneer of urban fox studies. Foxes are not big: the average weight of the largest vixens is 5.7kg (13lb), a little heavier than the average cat and less than half the weight of a skinny whippet. Foxes do not hunt in packs, nor do they kill for pleasure. If let loose in a hen coop they will kill everything in sight but their intention is to bury their prey for leaner times. And urban foxes are no more or less healthy than rural foxes. In fact, they are often the same animals. Researchers found fox cubs born in the middle of Bristol ended up living in rural bliss on the top of the Mendip Hills, almost 20 miles away.
While the idea that country foxes live long and in comfort is another myth, life in town is certainly nasty, brutish and short. A fox in captivity can live for 14 years; in cities, few make it to their second birthday. The vast majority die on roads. The only difference between rural and urban foxes, says John Bryant, an expert in their humane deterrence, is that an urban fox is accustomed to people. "Thousands of people feed them, encourage them into their gardens and those that are not fed always find food on the streets," he says.
A typical urban fox has a territory stretching across 80 city gardens. Devouring everything from berries and (usefully) rats to discarded KFC, vixens will have four or five cubs in the spring. We believe we are seeing more urban foxes than ever because, at this time of year, we probably are: in June, the cubs are now teenagers, exploring their local area and boldly going where their wiser parents dare not. By autumn, they move off in search of new territory, which is when they perish on the roads.
Few report attacks because they fear they won't be believed
There are few records of foxes attacking humans. In 2002, Sue Eastwood said her 14-week-old boy, Louis, was injured after a fox slunk into her sitting room in Dartford, south-east London. Hackney council claims it has never received a reported incident. But a number of the London borough's residents have been attacked by foxes, including three people in the same block of flats. Many people don't report fox attacks because they don't think they will be believed.
Claire Blakeway was attacked by a fox at her home in Stoke Newington, north London, in July 2003. She was sleeping in her bedroom when she awoke and screamed with pain. "It was like someone dropped a brick on my foot," she says. Blood was streaming from her foot. She had left the door to the fire escape open and, at dawn, a fox had padded into her room, three floors up. "It must've come into the bedroom, seen my foot and had a gnaw on it," she says. "It sunk its incisors into either side of my foot." Her screams scared it off before she could see it but it left distinctive paw prints – not the prints of a cat – running across her cream carpet and on to her sheets. Blakeway got antibiotics for the bite but never formally reported it to anyone, although she heard from the flat warden that two other residents had also reported foxes attacking them.
Experts, however, are baffled by the baby attack. "This is completely outside my experience of fox behaviour," says Bryant. "I think it is a young fox cub. They are all teenagers, they don't know anything, they have no fear. They wander into houses, steal cat food and will even sleep on the sofa." Urban foxes are particularly fond of schools: there are portable classrooms to nest underneath, open bins overflowing with half-eaten packed lunches and, crucially, no dogs. "Foxes are fascinated by children," says Bryant. "When they hear the children running around the playground they will sit in the bushes and watch them, captivated."
'Foxes are fascinated by children'
If this sounds sinister, it is not. Bryant works with schools to educate children and manage their fox populations. In his experience, foxes do not attack children; they are curious, but as wary as any wild animal. Martin Hemmington, of the National Fox Welfare Society, agrees that it is very unlikely that a fox will attack one child, let alone two. "I've been bitten more times than I care to mention through my own careless actions. When a fox bites you, it backs off. It doesn't look to come back and bite again," he says. When he has been called to catch a fox that has wandered into a house and become trapped, he says it is common to find them doing "the wall of death" – leaping around a room in a panic. Perhaps the fox inadvertently injured the children doing this, although Pauline Koupparis told BBC London her husband "lunged" at the fox "three or four times and it moved a few inches each time" before he eventually chased it down the stairs.
Hemmington is adamant that a fox would not have attacked the children believing they were prey. Foxes rarely attack creatures that are bigger than them and even the biggest vixen is not as heavy as a nine-month-old baby. "The only thing I can think is that the fox got into the house and panicked, but I can't understand why it panicked twice, with two children," he says.
Those in the fox-control industry are now reporting scores of panicky calls from parents wanting foxes eliminated from their gardens. Should there be a cull? "I don't think so," says William Moore, of Foxolutions. Culls don't work because if you kill or catch and remove an urban fox you create a vacuum: within days, a new pair of foxes will move in to establish a new territory. "They are pretty self-regulating. They keep themselves to themselves. Man is so dirty, we've encouraged them by chucking our food away," says Moore.
In fact, for every person beckoning them to their backdoor to feed them, there is another picking up the phone to order their extermination. For every exceptional incident of a fox attacking a child, we should recall another statistic: in 2008/9, 5,221 people, including 1,250 children, were treated in hospital in England after being mauled by man's best friend, the dog.
How to outfox the fox
▶ Never feed foxes; refrain from leaving out bird food and cat food.
▶ Use a secure wheelie bin. Don't leave rubbish bags outside.
▶ Foxolutions recommends Scoot, a fox repellent that fools a fox into not recognising its own scent markings so it believes another fox is claiming the territory.
▶ Try an infra-red device that links to an outdoor tap and fires water at intruding foxes (available from jbryant.co.uk).
▶ Put garden sheds on a concrete base so foxes cannot live underneath. If a fox nests underneath decking, remove one plank so the vixen no longer feels secure.
From The Guardian website.
That is really weird, I had no idea that foxes came to those areas, I hope those girls are ok and that those foxes are caught and killed, they are a major nuisance.
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