Urban Fox Evicted From Top of London's Tallest Skyscraper

LONDON -- A wily fox cub has been found enjoying the high life at the top of Britain's tallest skyscraper more than 900 feet above the city's streets.

The bushy-tailed trespasser spent two weeks scampering around London's Shard tower, which is still under construction, and made his home on the 72nd floor. It's believed that the intrepid urban explorer, named Romeo by rescuers, dined on scraps left by construction workers before finally being caught by pest control officers earlier this month.

A general view of the Shard building on January 13, 2011 in London, England.

Dan Kitwood, Getty Images

Pest control workers were called in to remove a fox that made its home on the 72nd floor of London's Shard building, which is still under construction.

"It was scary stuff heading all the way up to the top of the building, especially going up the last 34 floors," which haven't yet been fitted with glass, Les Leonard, pest control manager at Southwark Council, told the U.K. Press Association. "It was definitely not your typical call out."

The vertigo-free varmint was taken in by the Riverside Animal Center on the outskirts of south London, where he was given a thorough medical examination and several decent meals. "We explained to him that if foxes were meant to be 72 stories off the ground, they would have evolved wings," Ted Burden, the rescue center's founder, told the Press Association.

Romeo, who is believed to be 6 months old, has since been released back into the capital's London Bridge neighborhood, close to his original den and family. So far, he's heeded Burden's instruction to stay away from his old penthouse. "We think he got the message and, as we released him back on to the streets ... shortly after midnight on Sunday, he glanced at the Shard and then trotted off in the other direction," the animal rescue worker said.

Although red foxes are synonymous with Britain's countryside -- where they're hunted by horse-riding rural folk -- it's thought that more than 33,000 now live in cities.

Some British newspapers have been calling for the critters to be culled after a fox attacked 9-month-old twins at their home in East London last summer. And in January, a 4-foot-long supersized fox weighing a whopping 26.5 pounds was caught and killed in southeast England after it gobbled up a domestic cat.

However, fox experts point out that the nocturnal mammals are naturally shy scavengers and say that these were isolated incidents.