A two-year-old boy was bitten by a fox as he slept after the animal got into the family home through a damaged cat-flap.
The toddler needed hospital treatment after the attack in New Addington, Croydon.
The boy, who was asleep in bed, screamed as the animal sank its teeth into his heel. His cries alerted his parents, who ran upstairs where they found the fox sitting at the end of the child’s bed.
It ran into another bedroom and hid under the bed until it was chased out.
The boy was taken to Croydon University Hospital for treatment and given a course of antibiotics after the attack, at 2am last Thursday.
His grandmother Sharon Vaizey, 46, said: “When I heard my whole body went like jelly, I couldn’t move.
“You see it in the news and read about it in the papers all the time but you never think it’s going to happen to you and when it’s this close to home it’s so frightening.
“But I just think it is so lucky his parents were still up at the time. They have put a panel on the catflap now so it shouldn’t happen again but my daughter said she wanted to kill the fox.”
