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Three Aussie University Students In Hospital After Trying To Pet Fox

Three Aussie University Students In Hospital After Trying To Pet Fox

They all tried to befriend the animal with one student thinking it was a cat

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Three University of New South Wales students have wound up in hospital after trying to pat a local fox.

Unsurprisingly, each attempt to befriend the animal on the Sydney campus led to them being bitten, which required a tetanus shot at Prince of Wales Hospital.

Each injury seemed to happen on the same night at the weekend and it's believed that the same fox was responsible.

Gavin Wang uploaded his encounter with the animal on social media, showing the fox slowly approaching him while looking pretty friendly and curious.

As he reached out to pet the fox, it took a sniff and then bit his hand.

Kevin Wang/Instagram

Liz Willer, a 20-year-old computer engineering student, wrote about her nasty melee with potentially the same animal a little later on a UNSW Facebook page.

She said: "Silly me, [I] did pat him for a bit. Then he chomped me when I pulled away my hand...I have since been informed you shouldn't pat a fox."

When she arrived at hospital, she reportedly met another student who had been bitten by a fox. The unnamed man said he sat next to the fox, thinking it was a cat and tried to stroke it.

While the bites didn't require stitches or surgery, they did have to fork out AUD $300 (£165) each for the tetanus shot. That's gotta hurt.

kinkomadre/Reddit

Sydney Fox and Dingo Rescue volunteer Lara Schilling told the UNSW campus newspaper The Newsworthy that foxes should be avoided as they have been known to get aggressive when provoked.

"Foxes generally avoid humans in the wild, but urban foxes have this bada** kind of curiosity streak, so they might come up to sniff someone and they can bite," she said.

"They're sneaky little jerks sometimes but it's part of their quirks."

Authorities on the UNSW campus are now trying to hunt down the fox and have it removed. The fox has been named on social media as Frankie and has become something of an online celebrity.

Featured Image Credit: aksri2206/Reddit

Topics: News, Animals, Australia