Fox’s foot fetish

By Dion Teasdale
A BEER swilling fox with a nose for smelly feet has been wreaking havoc among Yarra Junction backpackers.
The furry fiend is the prime suspect in a spate of footwear thefts from the Aerie Heights Hostel in Hoddle Street over the past two weeks.
And even a brush with an irate karate chopping tourist has failed to deter the crafty canine.
Aerie Heights manager Lorraine Wagner said a number of hostel guests have reported footwear going missing from the front of their cabins.
“A lot of the backpackers are working in local orchards and come back at the end of a long day with smelly shoes which they leave outside overnight,” she said.
“In the past week a number of the backpackers have woken to find their shoes gone and at the same time there have been numerous sightings and encounters with a curious young fox.”
Mrs Wagner said one of the fox’s first victims was a Japanese man who woke one morning earlier this month to find his work boots had been taken.
“He came and told me he’d seen a fox take his shoes but we’ve never seen a fox up here before so I thought perhaps the truth was being lost in translation,” she said.
Mrs Wagner said the boots were the Japanese man’s only work shoes and the theft meant he was unable to return to picking fruit in the orchards.
“I found an old pair of gum boots and lent them to him so he could get back to work. It would have been terrible if the fox stopped him from working.”
Mrs Wagner said the theft prompted a camp-wide search for the work boots and the thief, but at the time of going to print the footwear had not been recovered.
Another backpacker, Swedish traveller Sophia Hultgren, lost one of her sneakers last week.
“I left my shoes at the back door overnight, which was silly considering I had heard there was a thief in the camp, and the following morning one of them was gone,” she said.
After an extensive search, Ms Hultgren found the stolen shoe in bushland near the hostel but said there were no evidence to suggest a fox had been involved.
“There were no teeth marks in the shoe and no damage. The shoe was very lucky,” she said.
Amid reports of missing footwear, Mrs Wagner said the hostel had been abuzz with rumours and sightings of the alleged culprit.
“One night last week a group of backpackers were sitting around a camp fire and a fox emerged from the darkness, leapt up onto the dining table and started drinking from a can of beer,” she said.
French backpacker Isabelle Grizeau, who captured the fox on film last week, said the thefts and sightings had initially been unnerving.
“At first some of us were a little frightened by the fox but now that we’ve seen it a few times we are used to it,” she said.
English backpacker Andy Hay had an up-close encounter with the fox one night last week. “I was sleeping on the couch in the recreation room and woke to find the fox sniffing my hair,” he said.
“I leapt up off the couch and was about to karate chop the fox but it quickly got the message it wasn’t welcome.”
Mr Hay, who had a barbecue sausage stolen by a ravenous kookaburra during a recent trip north, said the fox had united the camp of international travellers.
“This is one cocky fox but it’s presence has brought all of the backpackers together,” he said.
Mrs Wagner said the fox had also introduced the backpackers to the Australia tradition of telling tall tales.
“The fox seems to have sparked a nightly tradition of sitting around the camp fire and telling tales of other encounters with Australian wildlife,” she said.