Ducks, chickens and goats normally live in fear of a fox's bite. But surprisingly, at one home in Netrokona they all live together.

The scene was witnessed on Wednesday, 2 August, in Nayankandi village of Lengura union in Kalmakanda upazila of the district.

Azizul Haque of the village keeps a fox at home along with ducks, chickens and goats. His wife, Suma Akter, mainly looks after the animals. Since word spread that the fox lives with the other animals and birds, curious people have been crowding the house. They call the fox "Lalu".

Besides the fox, Azizul has 12 goats and a number of ducks and chickens. They share a shed in the courtyard, where the fox, the poultry and the goats all live together. The house is now known locally as "Sheyalbari", the fox house.

On Wednesday the fox was seen sitting on a hillock beside the house, while the 12 goats and the poultry were in the courtyard. When Suma Akter put food in a bowl, the ducks, chickens and fox ate together, and the goats wandered around the fox. They looked like members of the same family.

Suma Akter said that a year and a half ago her husband went to the Loharganw area of Nazirpur union, where some women of an ethnic minority community were catching fish in a pond. They spotted three fox cubs in a nearby thicket and rescued them. Azizul Haque asked for one of the cubs and brought it home. It was then about three months old.

She said her husband had no idea what to feed it. She tried to feed it milk from a bottle; she failed on the first day, but from the next day she fed it milk for about a month. Since then the fox eats all kinds of food. It is now about two years old.

Local Union Parishad member Akbar Ali said that when the fox, goats and poultry are let out in the morning, they go to a hillock beside the house. Before evening the fox herds the others back home, as if it were following its owner's orders. The fox does not bite or harass neighbours or other animals.

Anwar Parvez, veterinary surgeon at the upazila livestock office, said foxes are carnivores and are among the animals that get or carry rabies, a zoonotic disease. So both the fox and its keeper should be vaccinated against rabies.

He added that a fox's main food is the meat of ducks, chickens, rabbits, rats, lizards and the like. Given its nature, care should be taken that the old saying about leaving the chickens in the fox's care does not come true.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.