A fully-grown man has told how he was mugged by a fox, which cornered him and forced him into handing over his dinner.
Seb Baker, 29, weighs 15 stone but was attacked by the common red fox as he walked home from the supermarket.
The civil servant has revealed the wily fox, which had been sitting on a kerb at the side of the road, followed him into an alleyway.
There, he told the Sun newspaper, the aggressive animal leapt at him, circling him like prey and trying to snatch his shopping bag.
Despite making attempts to escape, the fox persisted and carried out a sustained attack on the food he had just bought from Tesco.
Eventually, Mr Baker claims, he resorted to offering the animal his loaf of garlic bread and the fox scampered off.
Mr Baker, from Orpington, Kent, told the Sun: “I had expected it to run away. I thought a fox would be scared of a 15-stone man.
“But the fox started circling me and then jumped up, trying to grab my shopping bag.
"Eventually I opened the bag and gave it a garlic loaf. He grabbed it and ran off.”
Wildlife expert John Bryant said foxes were getting bolder but were not generally interested in humans, and confirmed attacks like this are rare.
He advised: “If a fox is jumping at your shopping bag you need to shout at it and chase it off, not just give it the food.
“The best thing to use is a water pistol.”
In October 2011, five-year-old Marius Rook was mauled by a fox in his own bedroom in Hackney, London. Police used a noose to remove the animal from his home, after it it tried to bite his head.
In 2010, mother Pauline Koupparis told how a fox found its way into the upstairs bedroom of her nine-month-old twins, in her east London home.
The twins were left with severe injuries following the vicious attack.
Comment: Poor foxes getting a bad press will only feed the fox hunting lobby. Of course everybody just happens to walk around with a water pistol just in case they are mugged by a fox. Given the armed police tendency to shoot and kill unarmed civilians, perhaps the water pistol is not such a good idea...
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