A TODDLER needed hospital treatment after he was bitten by a fox as he slept in his bed.
The boy, 2, screamed as the wild animal sank its teeth into his heel – drawing blood – before the boy's parents heard his cries and ran upstairs.
The fox had managed to get into the house in New Addington through a damaged cat-flap in the kitchen when the incident happened at about 2am last Thursday.
The parents, who have asked not to be named, were still awake at the time and heard their child's shouts.
They found the fox sitting at the end of their child's toddler bed, which is low to the ground, before he ran off to the boy's older sister's room and hid under her bed.
The boy's grandmother Sharon Vaizey, 46, said she froze when she was told about the attack by her daughter.
Mrs Vaizey, a care worker, said: "When I heard my whole body went like jelly, I couldn't move. You think if they didn't hear the fox then it could have run off with him.
"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."
Her grandson was taken to Croydon University Hospital where he was checked out and given a course of antibiotics but no injections.
He has two bite marks on the end of his heel but is fine and is a "tough little boy" according to his grandmother.
Mrs Vaizey, who has four children and nine grandchildren, added: "He is the sort of boy that falls over all the time and has a laugh about it afterwards.
"But I just think it is so lucky they 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.
"She said she never had a problem with them before but now she hates them. I'm in two minds with them really.
"She said this one looked really healthy and that he looked well fed so you do worry that he might have been able to take him away."
The UK urban fox population is now said to be around 35,000.
In February 2013, a fox got into the bedroom of a one-month old baby in Bromley, and bit the infant's finger off.
