A woman was left screaming in terror after a “friendly” fox suddenly lunged at her as she tried to film it up close.
Emma Jay spotted the bold animal strolling casually along the pavement while out walking with a friend.
Thinking it might be tame because she’d fed chips to a different fox just days earlier, the 31-year-old sales support manager decided to whip out her phone to capture the moment.
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But things quickly took a wild turn when the curious creature charged straight at her.
“As we were on our walk, a fox walked past us very nonchalant, which is unusual as foxes usually don’t go near humans at all,” Emma, from South Ealing, West London, said.
“The week before, I had gone out for a walk and got some food and ended up feeding some chips to one, so I’m having a lot of interactions with foxes recently.
“My friend pointed out the same fox and said, ‘look, it’s your friend’, so I started walking up to it and filmed it.
“One of my colleagues does fox hunt sabotaging, so I was recording to show him how close I could get as he was surprised by my previous video of me feeding one.”
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She also told What’s the Jam: “As I got closer I realised it wasn’t scared and thought it was strange.
“As it started coming towards me, I panicked.
My friend said it probably has rabies and in that moment I freaked out.
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“I thought it was going to bite me and I was going to get rabies and die.
“I ran to my friend hoping she would save me.”
Emma’s shriek-filled clip, which she filmed on 5 November, has since gone viral online, racking up more than 2.1 million views – with viewers divided over her encounter.
One commenter wrote: “I thought it was common sense not to approach a fox?
“Especially if it’s not afraid.”
Another reassured her: “UK foxes don’t have rabies by the way – so if it did bite you, least it wouldn’t be as bad as getting rabies.”
A third joked: “I don’t think it looked cute to begin with.”
Others were more sympathetic, with one adding: “Poor thing is probably hungry and needs food.”
While another warned: “People seem to think wild animals are civilised.”
Emma admitted she let her imagination run away with her after remembering a tragic story she’d seen online.
She said: “I remember seeing a story about a woman dying of rabies earlier this year so I catastrophised and thought that could happen to me.
“I’m very much an animal lover and sometimes I forget they are wild animals and they aren’t domesticated like cats or dogs.
“I thought it was friendly but I’ve been reminded by a lot of people that London foxes are very different to ones I’ve experienced down south.”
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