"Why did the fox steal my shoes?" sounds like the start of a brain teaser (脑筋急转弯) or an annoyingly hot song. But for people in Berlin, it was a real question that a local fox was behind a series of shoes thefts.
About two weeks ago, Meyer, a resident of Berlin, noticed that one of his new running shoes had disappeared from his porch, and he decided to examine the theft, a German news site reported.
Meyer quickly learned that he was not the thief's only victim, and a tip helped him catch the fox. Days later, Meyer spotted the fox again; he followed it and discovered the fox's secret place of more than 100 shoes.
Meyer got a photo of the thieving fox and its ill-gotten shoes, which he shared on Twitter. The shoes contained sneakers, and slippers in range of colors, shapes and sizes, though the most numerous shoes by far were Crocs.
This isn't the first time that an urban fox has demonstrated a seeming shoe fetish (恋物). In August 2019, a fox in Melbourne, Australia, repeatedly visited a woman's porch and stole three boots over the course of a week. In a small town in western Germany, a female fox stole about 110 to 120 shoes in just one night, presumably "for her babies to play with", according to Reuters.
It's unknown whether all of these foxes were acting independently or whether their actions were linked, perhaps as part of an international shoe-stealing group with a bad purpose that humans can only imagine.
