As far as I can gather the rather vague and ever shifting "facts" in this case, followed by my own thoughts:
The fox got through a door that was left open because it was broken.
The housing association (Pheonix Housing) issued a statement saying the repairs were made to the door on 24th January, sometime before the alleged attack took place.
The story then seemed to shift to patio doors left open, possibly after a barbeque.
In sub zero February.
The story has excalated to more recent press reports of the living room being covered with blood, the fox pulling the child from a cot and smashing it's head against a door frame causing head injuries and a black eye, and the mother "wrestling" the fox to free the child.
None of the specific injuries or suspected causes of injury have been confirmed by the hospital or the police (as far as I can tell). In fact I don't think the hospital have said anything at all.
They have a dog.
I won't even state the obvious.
Also, a fox voluntarily entering a confined space such as a house is vanishingly unlikely anyway (unless they'd been deliberately trained and encouraged to by prolonged feeding incentives), but the idea a fox would enter a confined space with a dog is as likely as a wildebeast climbing into a car with a lion.
It is a wild animal. I've seen an urban (yes, mutant urban) fox turn tail and run from a 4 month old kitten. And it was a huge dog fox at that.
Some PR companies have been advertising online for fox attack stories in recent months (for financial incentives). They're are places where these pages have been saved, don't know if there's any current ones. Probably not. They tend to pull the adverts when more fox positive types find and spam them.
A powerful group within the ruling conservative party are lobbying hard to have the ban on hunting foxes with dogs lifted. A tough call when the majority of the population and MPs support the ban. Where better to start than 'if we don't kill them first they'll eat your babies.'
On a related note, you should see how they (and their tame papers) have been vilifying and smearing the RSPCA after they successfully bought a prosection against a hunt for illegal hunting. They even tried to get them stripped of charitable status.
Agenda? What agenda?
A few urban fox facts. There numbers are not increasing but have been stable for many years (at around 33000).
Their numbers are controlled by disease (mange mainly) and how much food they can get (ie how filthy we are) They also eat a lot of rats.
Some are getting tamer and bolder as they get more used to people, especially if fed regularly.
Answer: don't feed them, or feed rationally, at a distant, and only in small amounts.
As far as I know there is no historical record of a human being killed by a wolf (please correct me if I'm wrong), there's definately not been any of a person, even a baby, killed by a red fox. And they number many millions and range across half the globe.
.....and, just to finish (in case I haven't already said enough 8) )
Isn't any other British readers out there just a little bit ashamed? We are one of the few places on Earth (ABC question aside) where humans do NOT have to live alongside anything remotely dangerous. Where populations have to live with Tigers, Lions, Leopard, Bears, Puma, Wolves, highly venomous snakes/spiders etc etc, some debate may be justified, and we are usually the first to hold up our hands in horror at the suggestion they may want to cull/move these speices. Always the first to lecture how they have to find a way to live alongside and preserve their country's biodiversity. Even as their children sometimes really do get eaten.
Surely our incessant bleating about Foxes start to look just embarrassingly pathetic?
