Fox news: Paper thief caught in the act

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Cynthia Reed was driving to work around 5:45 a.m. this past Thursday morning when she spotted a fox walking through a neighbor’s yard. It wasn’t particularly startling; Reed’s husband had been out earlier in the morning and told her he saw a fox across the street.

What was surprising was the object the fox was carriyng in its mouth — a newspaper, apparently swiped from the front of a nearby home. Reed slowed down to snap a picture of the furry felon before it ran off with the paper, and she later shared the perpetrator’s image on the private social networking website Nextdoor.com.

It turned out the “well-read red fox” — as one commenter dubbed the morning prowler — may have a long list of victims.

“I was missing mine two different days,” said a neighbor of Reed’s in the Vantage neighborhood, which is located off South Kings Highway. “This morning I went out for the paper and the fox was in the street screaming at me. I just went back in the house, but she did take it today.”

Reed herself said seeing the sly bandit in action made a strange event from earlier in the week suddenly make sense.

“We found our paper on the side of the house on Monday and couldn’t figure out why, so now we know,” said Reed.

Foxes are not unusual in the Richmond Highway area, and residents from various communities chimed in on the thread to share their own fox run-ins. Experts say foxes tend to avoid people unless they are rabid, which is rare. However there was a fox attack reported earlier this year in the Fort Hunt area — with a man, a dog and a cat all getting bit in the incident.

Most of the concerns about the Vantage fox, however, were focused more on manners than safety.

“Maybe he’ll share it with the news hound,” said one commenter.

“I hope she’s recycling them when she’s done,” noted another.

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