Foxes in Kent are being blamed for a rather bizarre crime, they’re not being accused of thieving chickens or being noisy neighbours, instead they’re cutting car brakes.
According to The Guardian, the fiendish foxes have been upsetting drivers by chomping through the brake cables of several cars.
In fact things have gotten so serious that police are even warning drivers to be check their brakes before driving.
The police called in a wildlife expert, John Bryant, to work out what was damaging the vehicle’s cables and he believes that a group of teenage fox cubs gnawed through the cables and that it wasn’t the work of a human vandal.
Bryant said:
It is a pretty rare occurrence, but you do get a couple of cases every year. It is the cubs who are teenage hooligans now, so they are up to all sorts… They get under cars and snap away at all the cables when they are hyped up.
Kent police have said that there’s no evidence that the damage was deliberately caused by humans and that their expert had confirmed that the damage was caused by fox.
They said:
Foxes, especially cubs at this time of year, are known to rest under vehicles, and can chew through pipes. There is no evidence at this stage to suggest the damage was deliberately caused by a person. However, any new reports will be thoroughly investigated.
Despite the seriousness of the incidents no one has been hurt, although not everyone believes that the foxes are to blame.
One of the drivers ,who had to fork out £400 to get her car’s cables repaired, doesn’t believe that foxes are to blame.
She claims that the cuts are just too clean and thinks it’s a ‘malicious’ attack demanding ‘cast-iron proof that it was a fox’.
Meanwhile Tim Ellingham, another victim, realised the brakes on his Transit van had been cut last week when they felt spongy.
He says:
The line was cut virtually all the way through… You could have done it with a decent-sized pair of cutters and a good strong grip in one or two squeezes.
So are the foxes to blame? Or is this just another ploy by the government to discredit foxes!
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.