A MOTHER was shocked to find a fox in her bedroom.

The animal ran upstairs and settled down under a bed before it was eventually chased off.

Mum Eve Fisher was at her home in Shortlands Avenue, Ongar, when she first noticed the wild animal.

She said: "I was upstairs cleaning my teeth when I heard the noise of something falling over in my bedroom.

"I went to see what it was, and saw the fox lying underneath my bed looking up at me."

She said she ran downstairs straight away and picked up her six-year-old son James and took him out of the house.

Eve, a beautician, believes the fox had wandered into the house at 8am on Friday, coming through a back door that had been left open.

She said: "It was very scary. I went to my neighbour's house and told them, and he went into my house with a broom.

"He closed all the other doors to force it out into the garden and eventually managed to get it out. It didn't seem to be scared of anything."

Eve, 31, said that James still doesn't know the truth about what happened.

She said: "In the confusion as I took him out, he thought my neighbour and I were talking about a frog in my house, and that's what he still thinks was in there.

"He's very sensitive though – if he thought there might be a fox under his bed, he wouldn't sleep for weeks."

She added: "I've never seen foxes around the house or in the garden before.

"I was so shocked when I saw this one, especially after everything I've heard about in the news."

At the start of June, two nine-month-old twin girls were apparently mauled by a fox that had come into their house in Hackney, London.

Then two weeks ago in Brighton, a fox hiding under a temporary building at a school bit a three-year-old boy.

On its website, Epping Forest District Council's animal control unit says: "The red fox is now a common sight throughout the district.

"It is regularly seen in town gardens, the forest and country areas.

"Nervous and flighty animals, foxes are normally fearful of people, although there may be occasions when they appear quite bold and do not run off immediately when approached."