Fox bites student sleeping in attic

Rob Parsons12 April 2012

A student asleep in his attic bedroom woke up in horror from the pain of a fox biting him on his right eyelid.

It is believed the animal followed a cat through the cat flap. It went three floors up to the top of the house in Stockwell before biting 24-year-old Mario Castilli.

Mr Castilli said: "It was a 5.30am. I was asleep when I felt something bite me near my right eye. It was hard, it woke me up. I saw a fox, it was big."

The Italian exchange student was left with cuts, bruises and swelling around his eye. Ursula Keeling, 48, whose house Mr Castilli was staying in, said: "The fox got right to the top of the house in the converted bedroom in the attic where Mario was sleeping.

"He woke up to find a fox biting him hard on his face. He saw it scurry out. It was very frightening for him. I took him to hospital where he had to have a tetanus jab and antibiotics."

Mrs Keeling, who runs a food company, said it was not the first time a fox had got into the house. In February 2009 a vixen got in through the cat flap and chewed up clothes and shoes in a dressing room on the first floor next to her seven-year-old daughter Eila's bedroom.

Mrs Keeling and her husband Simon, 54, a banker, were woken by the noise and chased it from the house. The ground floor of their house was covered in bones and refuse which the fox had brought in after ripping up rubbish bags outside. Mrs Keeling, who is now calling for a council cull on foxes, said: "We were lucky my daughter's bedroom door was closed or it could have got into her room. God knows what could have happened. It's frightening, especially when you have children in the house. I can't believe it's happened again and someone has got hurt this time."

Mrs Keeling said she called Lambeth council after the first incident, but "they were not particularly helpful". She said: "We've got to get the message across that because they are predators they have no fear of anyone. If you see them on the road they just watch you. They are dangerous. It is important they are culled. We've got people around here who feed the foxes and that's only making the problem worse." In May last year nine-month-old twins Lola and Isabella Koupparis spent a week in hospital after a fox bit them in their cots at their home in Hackney.

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