Crazy like a fox. (Exercising the Right).

At 6 p.m. on July 13th, Brian Bloom left his home in Conover, North Carolina, to investigate the source of some animal sounds coming from his front yard. As he looked around, a fox suddenly scampered from under his car and charged at him. During an interview with the Hickory Daily Record for July 17th, Bloom recalled that when he attempted to fend off the aggressive creature by kicking it in the snout with his right leg, it sunk its teeth into his left leg. "I then tried a couple of karate moves, and tried to snap its neck," he told Daily Record staff writer Kim Gilliland, "but he wouldn't let go. Then when I started to choke him, my fiancee got me my pistol, and I shot him one time with my .40-caliber hollow points, but he didn't budge. I shot him again, and then a third time, but he still had a-hold of my leg. My fiancee finally got a stick and pried his mouth open, but he was dead by then."

Bloom called animal control and the Conover Police Department. Since the fox had behaved so strangely, he was advised to begin treatment for rabies, since early care is crucial (there is no remedy for the disease once symptoms appear). "They gave me a tetanus shot first," he told Gilliland, "then they shot me in the left calf twice, the thigh, right and left arm, and in the butt, both sides." He also faces an additional three-month vaccination regimen, since the state laboratory in Raleigh confirmed that the fox was indeed rabid.

According to Catawba County Animal Control, it was the county's first confirmed case of rabies in a fox this year, though a half-dozen raccoons had been diagnosed with the malady. "That was one crazy fox," Bloom reflects, "and I hope I never see one like that again."