Brunswick Ninety-Five Year Old Clubs Rabid Fox To Death

A 95-year-old Brunswick man was working outside his house when he was approached by a rabid fox.

Robert Galen is the latest in a string of people who have had to deal with a rabid fox in the past 10 days, according to Centralmaine.com. Two neighbors were attacked by a fox on the 17th before the animal was killed by a police officer. And an elderly Lisbon man killed a fox that walked into his house.

In this case, Galen was out working on his deck when he reached down to pick up a plank of wood, and then noticed a full-grown fox staring back at him. He said he often sees animals in his yard, since he lives in a wooded area, but it's not normal to have a typically nocturnal animal stand within a foot and a half of a human.

Galen didn't hesitate to see if the animal was sick, since it was looking him right in the eye, which is also not a normal behavior. The 95-year-old had also heard of the other encounters with rabid foxes, so he clubbed it on the head. At one point during the scuffle, he fell backward into a bush and the fox got a hold of his sneaker, but the teeth never touched his skin.

He was relieved when the animal was taken away and tested positive for rabies. Galen said he wouldn't want to kill an innocent animal, but is glad he reacted the way he did.

In the case of the Lisbon man, he was attacked by one that walked through the open door to his house. Before he could notice that it was a fox, and not his neighbor's dog, the fox had sunk its teeth into his leg. The Sun Journal reports 82-year-old James Ross grabbed a meat cleaver and killed the animal that later tested positive for rabies.