A 95-year-old Maine resident fought a mad fox to death with a wooden board

In his 95 years on this planet, Robert Galen has found himself in pretty hairy situations.

The retired radiologist and former captain of the Navy was shipwrecked in the Bahamas; crashed a small plane on a Maine pond after engine shutdown; and was stuck on a mountain in Greece after getting hurt in the leg during a bike ride.

But this week marked the first time in the life of "the pretty active" Mainer that he was face to face being a rabid fox – an animal that he reluctantly killed by beating him again and again with a wooden board.

"I've had fox here, but I've never had an experience like this," Galen, who has lived in Brunswick since the 1960s, said in a phone interview Thursday. . "I saw the animal, he was right in front of me – and I hit him."

The tense clash between Galen and the fox of about 10 pounds occurred Monday afternoon in Galen's backyard, he said. The bright nonagenarian replaced a rotting 16-foot board on his back deck and cut it into pieces with a chainsaw before installing a new board.

Galen said that he threw the chopped pieces down into the yard under his bridge, before finally walking around the house to collect them and transport them to his garden.

He had planned to use surplus wood to build a raised bed. But as one of the pieces hit the ground, he broke in half.

Galen says that he leaned over to pick up the split board, and when he looked up, he was there, standing within a foot and a half of him: the fox.

It's hard to say what could have happened if Galen had not held the piece of wood popped while he was closing his eyes with the hairy creature. But he is glad he was there.

Galen was aware of other recent reports in Brunswick about rabid animals. According to Brunswick police, a rabid skunk recently attacked two dogs in town, and a gray fox attacked a woman "who sustained significant injuries to both legs."

Given the unusual behavior of the fox, who approached him during the day, Galen did not take any chances.

Before the fox could get closer, Galen said that he instinctively took a punch by hitting him on the head.

"I hit him by reflex on the head with this piece of wood three or four feet in. I stunned him, but he was not too out of step," he said. Galen. "I beat him pretty hard. I must have hit him eight or ten times. As I hit him, I flipped him over and tried to kill him. He went down, but he was still viable. "

At one point Galen lost his balance and fell back into an azal bush while he was on the ground, he kept his attention on the fox.

" The fox is still alive and I'm lying on my back, hooked on this big club, and so we were very close to each other, so I hit it again, "he said. hurts your back in fact. It was an abnormal position in which I was. But I came out of the bush and I took one of the wooden planks and I put it on him and he shouted. It was pretty terrible.

"It was a confrontation that, if I had not had that stick in my hand, I would have been chewed."

Fortunately, Galen never came into contact with the saliva of the animal and the fox "never had the chance" to throw himself or attack him, was -he says. But he found some curious scratches on his New Balance sneakers after the incident, which he suspects – but can not be certain – of the fox. The small tears have not crossed his shoe, however.

The Portland Press Herald reported that a gamekeeper had ranged the fox and had won it. The next day, according to the newspaper, Maine Center for Disease Control officials contacted Galen to let him know that the fox had indeed been enraged. Brunswick police also confirmed this at the Globe.

While the run-in was alarming, Galen was relieved to hear the news.

Since his wife died almost ten years ago, he said that he "befriends wildlife" that he often sees on his property. Sometimes, he says, when he has a good leftover bone dinner, he throws it out on his deck, and looks like crows, or raccoons, or other critters are investigating. on leftovers and nibbling

Galen would have been disappointed with what he had done.

"I really want to emphasize that I was really relieved that the animal was really mad," he said. "I felt bad about killing him."

Steve Annear can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear .