In fact, on the continent foxes are the single biggest carrier of rabies. Now, if rabies ever makes it to the UK, do you want rabid foxes hanging around your garden and coming into your house?
There is some anecdotal evidence that foxes are now starting to attack babies and young children. As long ago as 2003, when my partner and I were clearing out his late father's bungalow in Hillingdon (west London), one of the neighbours told us that a fox had leapt up onto his grand-daughter's pushchair and tried to pull her out. I encountered a fox on a path in broad daylight a few yards from John's dad's bungalow. Not only was it not afraid of me, an adult, it actually adopted a threatening stance and bared its teeth.
A couple of months later, when I went down to London for an interview, I picked up a copy of the Standard to read on the train back. In it was a double page spread about a group of parents in another west London area who were demanding the council get rid of foxes living in shrubbery on nearby wasteland. The foxes had begun stalking young children and grabbing at their clothing and the children could no longer be left to play in back gardens. However, a local wildlife group was denying vociferously that foxes would ever attack humans. Yet the parents, like John's dad's neighbour, were quite clear about what they had seen.
The reality is that foxes, like any other animal, will change their behaviour over time in response to the conditions they encounter. There is absolutely no doubt at all that urban foxes are now completely habituated to humans and have no fear of us at all. Attacks on vulnerable humans, most likely children, are going to become much more common.
