Is Jasper the fox a cuddly family pet or a smelly killer?
B asil Brush and Beatrix Potter’s Mr Tod might be appealing, but few people would want to share their home with a real fox. Many of us fed up with the urban variety would prefer it if we didn’t have to endure the pesky (and sometimes vicious) vermin, even as neighbours.
But that’s not the view of Natalie reynolds, 35. in her £1million detached home in the hertfordshire village of sarratt, an eight-month-old fox called Jasper, which she ‘adopted’ as a cub, has his paws firmly under the table, so to speak. and, as these pictures show, he’s got them on the sofa and on her children’s trampoline, too.
animal-lover Mrs reynolds — who also has three dogs and a cat — insists the fox is a much-loved part of the family even if Jasper, who occasionally nips at people, doesn’t get on with her partner Matt.
‘They get such a bad press, but he’s around my children and he just plays with them,’ said Mrs reynolds, who has a son, Chace, three, and daughter Marissa, five. ‘he’s like a cross between a cat and a dog. he’s part of the pack. The dogs chase him around, he loves the cat — but the cat isn’t too fond of him.’
Jasper was found abandoned at two days old and taken to a vet where one of her friends works. she told Mrs reynolds, who was quick to take him in, even bottle-feeding him through the night.
Jasper now sleeps outside but in the day he is free to roam the garden — and the house. however, he isn’t always a model pet: he likes to scavenge for roadkill and once bit a local photographer.
Mrs reynolds admits she wouldn’t recommend a pet fox lightly — not least because of Jasper’s dreadful smell. The rsPCa confirmed that it’s not illegal to keep foxes as pets, but says: ‘they are wild animals and do not fare well as domestic pets’.
stories of fox attacks in recent years give cause for concern. in 2010, ninemonth-old twins lola and isabella Koupparis were mauled in hackney, East london. Three years later, four-week-old Denny Dolan was badly hurt when he was dragged from his cot in Bromley, south-East london.
so while Jasper, at least, seems more mischievous than menacing, many others have not been so lucky in their encounters with his wild cousins.