Savaged by fox as I slept in my bed
Victim left with 6 wounds after wild animal crept in through a patio door
A WOMAN woke up screaming and covered in blood after a fox attacked her while she slept.
Jodie Nailard, 22, was left with six puncture wounds after the animal squeezed into her home through a patio door before creeping into her room and mauling her as she lay in bed.
She awoke at 5.30am in agony with the fox on her bed.
The personal assistant said: ‘My left bicep was throbbing with pain and covered in blood and I wondered what the hell had happened.
‘Then I saw a fox at the end of my bed and I just screamed and burst into tears.’
The animal jumped off the bed and ran out the door after she kicked it, she told The Sun.
Following the terrifying incident last Sunday, her boyfriend Harry King, 23, who lives with her, noticed the fox was still near their ground floor flat in Clapham, south-west London.
Mr King, a media production assistant, threw pillows to scare it away before driving Miss Nailard to A&E at nearby King’s College Hospital. She was kept there for two days, receiving vaccinations against rabies, tetanus and polio. She said she was left traumatised by the experience and hadn’t slept since the attack.
Miss Nailard added: ‘I don’t have a window in my room, just the patio door, so we kept it open because it was so hot.
‘It was on the latch – there was only a 5in gap.
‘But there is no way I am opening the door again at night. I can’t be in the bedroom by myself at night any more. I’m just scared it will come back. It was something I never thought would happen to me. I’m not going to move, I’m Bite marks: Livid wound on Miss Nailard’s swollen arm not going to let a fox make me leave. It was just really bad luck – a freak accident.’
But Professor Ian Rotherham, an urban wildlife expert at Sheffield Hallam University, said attacks of this kind were ‘incredibly rare’. He added: ‘There’s nearly a quarter of a million adult foxes in the country and around 33,000 urban foxes.
‘With 33,000 in urban areas you’re going to get a proportion of those who get into situations where they are panicky, and I think these situations involve the fox getting into an unfortunate situation. That’s the explanation. It’s incredibly rare and the animal would not set out to harm. So if you’re on the receiving end of it like then it’s pretty shocking.
‘They are firmly established in urban areas and a lot of people actually like them... and get fantastic contact with nature.
‘But one issue that then arises is that people start to regard them as like a family pet, and they’re not. They’re a wild animal. It’s like a badger – a big wild animal, so you’ve got to give it due respect.’
Several fox attacks on humans have been recorded in recent years. In February, sevenmonthold Raeya Wyatt was rushed to hospital after an urban fox snuck through a back door and attacked her as she sat in her bouncer at her home in Plymouth, Devon.
She was later given a tetanus jab and antibiotics in hospital.
Raeya’s mother, Leanne Boundy, 27, said that if the attack had lasted any longer her daughter could have been ‘ripped to pieces’.
In 2013, four-week-old Denny Dolan had his finger nearly bitten off when a fox pulled him from the sofa at his home in Downham, south-east London.