Mr Macky asleep in Mackeson Road

By Isabel Jackson

A HAMPSTEAD woman has told of the bond she shared with a friendly fox after the animal was found dead in the street.

While foxes are normally nocturnal and shy away from humans, Kiki Kendrick said this fox would accompany her and her dogs on walks around the area.

She named him Mr Macky after his favourite haunt – Mackeson Road – and said he had become a “popular local character” in his own right.

“He really did trot up and down Mackeson Road like he owned the place,” she said. “A week ago, me and my husband were getting off the bus…and he escorted us home like the concierge.”

Ms Kendrick formed a bond with the fox, who she first saw three years ago, when “he was probably a teenage fox and just left home”.

She said: “He’d toss this shoe up in the air and he’d catch it and he’d be rolling over with it.”
Soon Ms Kendrick started seeing him more regularly, when she was packing the car to go and stay with her mother, who she was then caring for.
“One time he tried to get in the car, I think he must have thought, ‘where does she keep going, I’m going to find out,’” she said.

Later she would start leaving food for him.

Ms Kendrick said: “I always knew he’d been because if he didn’t like what was on offer, he would tip it up and there would be rice and noodles everywhere, as if to say, ‘don’t you dare serve that up again’.”

Her dogs had to get used to the fox joining them on walks.

“At first the dogs would growl,” she said. “They’d run away. Eventually, they’ve just gone ‘this one’s not going to go, we might as well just get used to him’.”

Ms Kendrick found out that Mr Macky had died last Thursday morning, when her neighbour sent a photo of the fox lying on a wall.

“I was on the bus and I saw the photograph and he was perfect, I mean no blood or anything,” she said.
“I thought he was sunbathing or asleep or something because he looked so peaceful.”

She said when she got off the bus she was “shaking” as she went over to see her animal companion on the wall.

“He’d probably been hit [by a car] because he was always rolling over in the middle of the road, showing off, acting cute,” she said. “And I did think it was only a matter of time before he rolled in front of the wrong car.”

Since his death Ms Kendrick said that her neighbours had taken “a photo of a vixen and the cubs in their garden and said, ‘does that mean this vixen and her cubs are widows and orphans?’”

She said that Mr Macky has the same ears as the cubs, so she thinks they are his.

Ms Kendrick was going to bury the fox in the garden, but said: “I’ve run out of space, it’s like a pet cemetery.”

She had decided to take Mr Macky to the vets, but when she went back to get him, he had been picked up by the council.

She currently has two 85-year-old tortoises called Mr and Mrs T, as well as three cats, two dogs and two rescue goldfish.