Over the weekend, a tawny beast slithered under the garden fence and walked at a leisurely pace around our garden. It was an adult dog fox, the size of a giant corgi, with a magnificent bushy tail (unlike most of the mangy female foxes that populate our road).
I opened the kitchen door to scare the intruder away, but it stood still, eyeballing me, before taking another swaggering tour of the premises and leaping over the fence into a neighbour’s garden.
Foxes seem to be on the increase across central London. I saw one the other day in a garden square in Belgravia, and another last week as I arrived at a Christmas party in an expensive Kensington street where every property will qualify for the highest level of Rachel Reeves‘ mansion tax.
Round our area in west London they are now as common a sight as a Deliveroo driver. Look out of the window on any evening and you will spot one on its perambulations or hear them shrieking like a tortured baby.
So I have some sympathy with the multi–millionaire businessman David Walsh, who has decided to erect an electric fence around his £44million Notting Hill home to keep out foxes.
To howls of derision, Mr Walsh says his wife is scared of them. But a host of objectors in the local neighbourhood regard the fence as both unsightly and wildly over the top. Judging by the pictures, it does add a touch of Wormwood Scrubs to the elegant enclave.
Despite that, something does need to be done about these urban troublemakers.
I know there are those who regard foxes as rather charming animals to be treated with the same affection we reserve for pets. When I saw that fluffy, almost cuddly animal in my garden, I nearly felt that way myself – but then I remembered the trauma a fox’s visit delivered a few years back.
Pictured: A Notting Hill house with an electric fence designed to keep foxes away from the property
One afternoon I came into our sitting room, where the TV had been left on, to discover a small, greyish fox curled up on the sofa, happily watching Netflix. The fox had wandered in through our open kitchen doors. Shocked, I yelled for my partner David to help chase the unwelcome visitor out, which took some doing, and once it had been dispatched, sat down on the sofa in the same place where the fox had been, to compose myself.
A few minutes later, and it was only minutes, I felt a slight itch on my bottom through my trousers. I ignored it – but an hour later a vivid red rash emerged.
I took an antihistamine pill and hoped since it was a Friday – don’t these things always happen on a Friday? – that the rash would be gone by the next day as I would have no access to my GP surgery over the weekend.
But far from it. The next morning, the redness had spread and was agonising.
I sped over to my local A&E where miraculously I was examined quickly, although the doctor had no idea what it was. Some kind of allergic reaction, he said, and prescribed the steroid Prednisolone, plus Fexofenadine, a very standard antihistamine taken for hay fever.
By the Sunday I was ready to rip my skin off. I spent hours in the bath, the only place where the itching was soothed, and applied bottles of camomile lotion that I remembered being used for childhood chicken pox. The nights were unbearable: unable to sleep, I tore at my skin.
By the third day, since I couldn’t get an immediate NHS appointment, I booked in to my private GP. He examined me and said it looked very painful – but he couldn’t tell me what it was either. He prescribed a stronger steroid Dermovate and recommended a dermatologist.
Although I have a moderately severe reaction to mosquitoes, I am not someone who is particularly allergic to anything and I was damn sure this wasn’t mosquitoes. I thought it might have been some previously undiagnosed food allergy, but it seemed unlikely. These spots were small, hard and raised, not the kind of large, blistery welts you typically get with an allergic reaction.
The stress of the whole issue was exacerbated by the fact that in a few days we were due to fly to Croatia for a week’s holiday. There was no way I was going anywhere in this condition. I had to find the solution.
Alexandra Shulman caught scabies from a fox which crept into her house and curled up on the sofa
The two–hour drive to the dermatologist on the other side of town, while battling the festering inflammation, was excruciating.
He examined me and concluded that he couldn’t be sure, but it was probably ‘eczematous folliculitis’ – an infection of the hair follicles – and added an antibiotic used for acne to my growing list of medication.
But that didn’t work either. The rash got worse over the next week, expanding to my whole torso, arms and legs. In desperation, I booked another appointment with another dermatologist. On the way there I spoke to my ex–husband about my condition, and he said without a second’s hesitation: ‘It sounds like scabies.’
I answered impatiently that, since I had seen several competent doctors and one of the capital’s leading dermatologists, I imagined that if it were the relatively common condition of scabies, one of them would have recognised it.
But when I got to the consulting room I mentioned it, almost as an aside to the dermatologist, who said it didn’t look like scabies to him but he would take a sample for examination.
Back came the result within the hour, and I quote: ‘The diagnosis is one of human sarcoptic mange resulting from infestation with the dog/fox scabies mite sarcoptes scabiei var canis. I have to say this is the first time I have come across the situation in over 30 years of dermatology.’
Nice. Fox scabies or mange.
Fortunately this kind of scabies does not pass between humans so I was not contagious, but I had to douse my whole body with the same disgusting smelling liquid used for head lice for several weeks.
Foxes seem to be on the increase across the country but no has come up with a solution to the epidemic, writes Alexandra Shulman
Croatia was by this time consigned to the list of holidays that never happened.
That was an extreme example of the damage foxes can cause, but it’s not the only problem I’ve encountered. They leave a trail of rubbish in the garden, dragging plastic bags and empty takeaway cartons from one house to the next and knocking over the recycling bins. They wreck garden fences by digging huge holes under them and tearing away slats, and they leave their poo – fox scat – outside doors and on windowsills.
In September, while I was away, my stepdaughter came back one evening to the house to discover shoes littered throughout the rooms, some in perfectly good condition, others destroyed.
At first, confounded by what might have happened, she thought there had been an intruder, but I immediately recognised the dastardly presence of a fox who had probably managed to enter via a broken catflap.
Having one’s shoes destroyed (luckily it didn’t seem interested in my Gucci kitten heels, preferring David’s old slippers) is unpleasant enough but the thought of foxes rampaging around the house in the night was much more disturbing.
Despite the damage they cause, nobody has come up with a solution to the epidemic of foxes sweeping the UK. Which is why I fear we are condemned to have to share our neighbourhood with these predatory exotic vermin, like it or not.
Maybe electric fences aren’t such a bad idea after all.
