Fox’s overnight stay in Brown causes rabies scare

Less than a week after a urine leak, Brown residence hall freshmen had another memorable experience.

On Sept. 6 at around 8 p.m., several students brought an injured fox—which they found at the underpass by Smith Warehouse while walking back from West Campus—into Brown. The fox was kept in a cardboard box in Residence Coordinator Daniel Flowers’ office overnight before being taken away by the Duke University Police Department to be tested for rabies. The fox survived and was placed in an animal shelter after testing negative for rabies.

“First the fox ran away a little bit, but later it got tired, just sitting there,” said freshman Aidan Workman, one of the students involved in the incident. “We realized that its legs were way too hurt.”

Workman said he and the other students called Durham County Animal Services, who told them that someone would pick up the fox and instructed the students to leave the animal where they found it. However, the group of freshmen waited at the scene for around 30 minutes, and no one arrived, Workman said.

He explained that the group also contacted other organizations as well—including Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge and Triangle Veterinary Hospital—but they were either closed for the night or said they were no longer taking animals. At that point, the freshmen decided to take matters into their own hands.

“If we just left it there, it probably would end up dying anyway,” Workman said.

The students took the fox back to their residence hall and asked their resident assistant for help, Workman explained. He said he wrapped his hands in a sweater and placed the fox into a cardboard box that one of their friends had brought. The students first took the fox into the guest bathroom in Brown before Flowers and the RAs decided to keep the fox in the RC’s office for the night.

Freshman Bryn Hammarberg noted that although the fox had clearly injured its legs, there was not much blood—only a wound on its mouth. Two RAs examined the fox to make sure it would survive.

The next day, DUPD picked up the fox and confiscated the sweater that had been used to carry the fox, as well as other clothes that the sweater had touched. They also sent the students who had contact with the fox or the box to be tested for rabies as a precaution.

“The only contact was me picking up the box through the sweatshirt,” Workman said. “The doctor had us recount the whole story, and since no one got bitten, the doctor said there was no risk [of] having any rabies at all and just sent us away.”

Students in Brown approached the incident with humor. Freshman Julie Williams, a Brown resident, said students in the dorm named the fox Kashew Brown and made a Facebook page for it.

Sophomore Sameer Pandhare, a resident assistant in Brown and sportswriter for The Chronicle, noted that he is glad his residence hall was able to save the fox.

“You know that we had leaking urine earlier in the year—our dorm is not having it easy,” he said. “But we got a lot of reputation from people around us in saving the fox. I am really proud of my residents.”