A couple say they woke up to discover a fox watching them sleep before the intruder trashed their bathroom.
Beth Pinfield, 27, thought her cat Salem was "making a racket" at 5am on Monday, but after a panicked double-take she spotted a large fox peering at her through the darkness at her home in South Littleton, Worcestershire.
She woke up her boyfriend, Liam Ibbotson, to help her evict the unwanted house guest but he apparently screamed and spooked the creature.
Dashing into the bathroom, the furry animal swiped two shelves off the wall, knocked over plants and even urinated all over the floor, leaving a stench that lingered for days.
Footage shows the four-legged trespasser perched on hairdressing apprentice Beth's bathroom window sill while surrounded by fallen plants, broken shelves and fake tan bottles.
After groundsman Liam, 28, shared the video on TikTok, it accumulated more than 4.3million views and over 400,000 likes and comments.
Beth said: "At first, it was sat in the bedroom window sill.
"I woke up, looked and I was like 'is that a fox?' I double looked.
"I thought I was dreaming. Our cat normally scrambles up on the windowsill so I first thought 'what on earth are the cats doing they're making a racket' but it wasn't the cat, it was a big fox.
"It's not something you expect to wake up to at 5am on a Monday morning.
"Liam was petrified to be honest. His first reaction was to scream at it. I'd just woke him up at 5am and there was a fox staring at us.
"That freaked the fox out so it then legged it into the bathroom and was trying to find a way to get out.
"It completely trashed the bathroom and god knows what else is in there because it still smells, we can't get rid of it.
"It knocked a few shelves off in the bathroom, knocked a plant over and left a smell. I think it had a wee in the bathroom.
"It's not pleasant. We've bleached it and everything but we can still smell it. It's driving us mad."
The couple had just renovated their kitchen and created a makeshift cat flap for their 11-month-old black kitten but had no idea other creatures might find their way inside.
They believe the inquisitive fox had squeezed his way through the cat flap or an open window, trotted through their kitchen and straight up their stairs.
Beth said: "We'd literally just decorated the kitchen and I was hoping it hadn't destroyed the kitchen but luckily it didn't.
"We have a cat flap, which we had to build ourselves so whether it came through that, I don't know.
"It either came through there or we had a window open downstairs, it might have come through there.
"Our cat survived. The cat was more interested in guarding its food than the fact there was a fox in the house.
"The fox just came straight upstairs and watched us sleep. I don't know how long it'd been there - that's the worrying part."
After Liam let out a yelp at the unexpected sight, the fox then 'legged it' into their bathroom and trashed the room - destroying everything in its path.
Beth added: "This went on for half an hour with us trying to get the fox out. It stayed in the bathroom on the windowsill.
"We tried to find a way to get him out, we tried to coax him out but it wasn't having any of it.
"Where I live, the bathroom opens up onto the roof of the kitchen. We managed to get it out once Liam had got the courage to open the window next to it and off it went.
"It jumped out of the bathroom, onto the roof and into the garden.
"I wasn't so pleased about it shoving my tan in the sink, there was fake tan everywhere too. I wasn't very supportive to be honest, I just couldn't hold myself together.
"Liam grabbed the broom and thought he'd be able to open the window with that. We found it quite funny that he was talking to it, talking about the handle and the fox is just looking at him.
"He does look quite small on the video but he was actually quite big, about the size of a medium-sized dog."
On his TikTok account, Liam said he feared the fox was after their guinea pigs.
Liam wrote: "Best part was my cat was downstairs guarding his food. Looks like he had his priorities.
"I bravely opened the window by hand before the fox left a smell that still won't go away.
"So I opened the window to our kitchen extension and he yeeted [threw] himself safely off the roof. We have guinea pigs so I think he might have been after them.
"My girlfriend woke me up at 5 am to tell me 'there's a fox'. I sat up and low and behold there he was just staring at me in the dark. I may have screamed and felt bad.
"So I got out of bed to turn the light on and open the doors downstairs. He didn't get the hint and went into the bathroom."
