A lucky escape…
A fox came to us from the RSPCA late one evening with reports that it had been attacked by two large dogs. Foxes are renowned for being very vicious and also perfect escape artists therefore we could not examine him conscious. He was brought to us in a large carrier, from what we could see there appeared to be a wound on his back and also blood coming from his mouth, we needed to see whether the wound would need surgical intervention or whether it could be left to heal. We also needed to check on his bleeding mouth.
Once asleep the first thing we did was quickly check his mouth, we could not see any injuries and believe the blood may have been from fighting back with the dogs. After this we muzzled the fox as although he was very heavily sedated, if by chance he woke up we did not want to get bitten! On examination of the fox we only found one small puncture wound. The patch that we thought looked like a wound was in fact a very heavily saliva stained patch, possibly from one of the dogs trying to bite the fox.
Whilst the fox was asleep we took an x-ray to make sure there were no internal injuries and very luckily nothing abnormal could be seen! We recovered the fox in his carrier and when he was awake we sent him to a local wildlife rescue centre to be monitored for a few days before being released back into the wild.
The fox was an adult male and in very good general health, there were a few signs of old injuries that had healed over showing that this probably wasn’t his first altercation…however this time he came away unscathed…lucky Mr Fox!
Blog published by Demi Ann Seddon – Auxiliary Nurse – Bay Vets Lancaster
