Fox attacks baby in house

Published on Tuesday 2 July 2002 01:00

A FATHER told yesterday how a fox attacked his baby son at their home. Peter Day, 44, from Dartford, Kent, said the animal walked into his home and bit 14-week-old Louis.

The baby was taken to the Darenth Valley Hospital in Dartford suffering from four puncture wounds on his head and was kept in overnight.

Mr Day said his partner, Susan Eastwood, 36, had fallen asleep with Louis when the incident happened last Wednesday.

He said: " I walked into the kitchen and was there no more than a few seconds and the next thing I heard was Louis screaming. I came into the living room and there was a fox sitting there beside my wife. He had already done the damage to Louis.

"I picked him up and chased the fox out of the house and all the way up the garden."

Klare Kennett, a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, advised people to use their commonsense and always supervise children when they are around animals - but she stressed that foxes were not a safety risk.

She said: "The RSPCA has every sympathy for the family, but we would like to reassure the public that foxes generally avoid human contact. It is exceedingly rare for a fox to even enter a house, let alone attack a child. "

Trevor Williams, the director of the animal rescue charity the Fox Project, based in Tunbridge, Kent, has 30 years’ experience working with foxes, but said this was the first case of its kind he had heard of.

He said: "I’m absolutely convinced that we are looking at a concussed or brain-damaged animal to act in this way. That is not normal fox behaviour."