Fashion BITES BACK

Furious about the paint on her fox fur, Lydia never expected what happened next

In a famous fashion house, Lydia Baddeau, an ill-tempered supermodel, took off the fox fur she wore wrapped about her shoulders and threw it across the changing room.

‘Ruined! It’s ruined!’ she screeched at a startled shop assistant. ‘Those ignorant protesters sprayed my fox fur with green paint.’

‘Maybe they felt that Arctic foxes aren’t fashion accessories,’ the girl said. ‘Maybe they thought the animal should be running free in the wild.’

Lydia glared.

‘Just get me the new evening gowns to try on.

I’ll talk to your supervisor later about your attitude.’

On the footpath outside, apart from the Animal Salvation Squad waving banners and holding tins of paint, stood a humanlooking wildlife conservation android.

Sent by intelligent aliens from beyond the solar system to reverse the annihilation of the planet’s fauna, the droid adjusted the dead fox’s earthly coordinates.

In the changing room, Lydia curiously watched as the fur’s glass eyes popped out of the skull and rolled towards her feet.

Then, horrified, she saw the animal’s head, ribcage and legs fill out, before two cunning, living, seeing orbs once again filled the eye sockets.

Seconds later, the now living and angry fox sprang into motion.

It leapt up and attacked the woman it had been programmed to see as its mortal enemy.

‘I was collecting some gowns for madam to try on,’ the shop girl explained to Detective Inspector Watson an hour later.

‘Then she started screaming. By the time I got here…’

The detective followed the assistant’s gaze to the supermodel’s now lifeless body lying in a pool of blood. The floor of the changing room was a mess.

‘I hear Ms Baddeau had a bit of bother on her way in here today,’ said Watson.

‘Yes. The protesters made her furious. Someone sprayed her fox fur coat with bright green paint.’

The assistant and the policemen glanced around the changing room.

‘Where’s the coat?’ Watson asked.

There was no sign of the fox fur anywhere.

‘It vanished,’ the girl replied.

‘Arctic fox fur’, Watson typed into Google that evening, hoping to gain some insight, or perhaps a clue, into the enigma of the missing coat.

What the detective discovered, however, left him even more confused than ever.

A scientist at a research station in southern Greenland had just uploaded footage of an

Arctic fox, its snowy-white fur mottled with what looked like bright green paint, dashing across the icy terrain.

The policeman frowned, sat back in his chair and pondered the mystery.

Meanwhile, banking billionaire Mortimer Goldbrick, stepped out of his city apartment block.

He was spotted by a human-looking wildlife conservation android.

Dressed in a real bearskin coat, Mr Goldbrick was starting to wonder why the garment was suddenly feeling so much bulkier than before.

Next thing, he was facing a huge, live, very angry grizzly bear!

The now living and angry fox sprang into motion