The look that says 'I've just eaten all your chickens': The fox who was too fat to flee the coop

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Instead all she found was one - very full - fox, as well as an assortment of blood-stained feathers.

Leave me alone: Basil looks unimpressed to be woken up after feasting on the chickens

The creature, which she has nicknamed Basil, had already killed six of her chickens the week before. He returned two weeks ago to finish off the feast, but found that his eyes were bigger than his belly.

The extra portion of poultry was clearly too much for him, and he brazenly decided to stay in the warm, if slightly gory, hen house to sleep off the effects of his over-indulgence.

Mrs Strick, of St Levan in west Cornwall, said that she had been hoping to collect some eggs for her breakfast when she opened the coop. "All that was there was a lot of feathers and a very contented fox," she said.

"He stayed there all day, too full to move, even though there was a constant stream of people looking at him."

However, despite Basil's greedy ways, Mrs Strick decided not to exact any revenge on him for the killing of her hens.

"It's nature I suppose," she said. "If you live in the country it's what you have to put up with."