Both Drs. Katy Dunn and Ronnie Robertson, who operates Robertson-Dunn Veterinary Services on Industrial Street, said they can’t recall the last time they saw a dog with active rabies. The dog was euthanized Monday, along with the other three family dogs who had been exposed, and the members of the family now must have post-exposure rabies vaccinations, said Dr. Robertson.
Once active, rabies is always fatal, said Dunn, “you die a slow, painful death."
In a horror movie, a shark or an oversized barracuda might attack an unsuspecting swimmer, but in Fairfax County it was a 35-pound rabid beaver that drove an 83-year-old woman out of the water screaming.
The woman was swimming early Tuesday evening in Lake Barcroft, a 135-acre private lake in a neighborhood near Bailey’s Crossroads, when a rabid beaver attacked, latching on to her and biting her several times.
During the struggle, the beaver took a bite out of her left calf, nearly bit off her thumb, and left puncture wounds all over her arms and legs....it wouldn’t stop.Rabies is more common in the summer.
A bat landed on a person sitting in section 500 of M&T Bank Stadium as the Ravens played the Detroit Lions in a preseason game, officials said. It isn't known whether the bat had rabies because the person brushed it off and the bat flew away. But health officials said it's possible other people seated in the area could have touched the bat.
Rabid bats may show abnormal behavior, such as outdoor activity during daylight; rabid bats may be grounded, paralyzed or may bite a person or animal. Not all rabid bat act abnormally, but bats that do are more likely to have rabies.
Once he was bitten, he grabbed the animal and threw it away from his body. “Then it came at me again,” he said.
The beaver bit him in the leg and then again in his buttocks, arm, hand and waist. At that point, Brousseau said, “the adrenaline kicked in.”
“I grabbed it in its mouth,” he said. “I had it around its bottom jaw as tightly as I could because I knew it was going to either bite me or bite the boys. I called the Scouts to come give me a hand.”
Free-roaming dogs number in the tens of millions and bite millions of people annually, including vast numbers of children. An estimated 20,000 people die every year from rabies infections — more than a third of the global rabies toll.After a 2001 law was passed forbidding the killing of stray dogs, the dogs have multiplied and are a fanged public nuisance.
India’s place as the global center for rabid dogs is an ancient one: the first dog ever infected with rabies most likely was Indian, said Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Dog bites cause 99 percent of human rabies deathsIs anyone doing anything? I hope this story will help!
One of the normally peaceful mammals savaged her back, legs and feet 25 times, forcing the 33-year-old to get rabies shots, the Star Tribune reported.
"It just kept coming after me," she said. "You never knew where it was going to bite next."
Prudhomme was preparing for an upcoming triathlon in the lake near Duluth with a friend last Wednesday. She wore a wetsuit over her swimsuit, but the otter was able to tear through it, leaving bites in her flesh as deep as two inches.
Skunk rabies now is present in most of Colorado east of the Continental Divide, with the exceptions of the Denver metro area and Jefferson and Boulder counties.
Dr. Elisabeth Lawaczeck, state public health veterinarian at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said, "Don't procrastinate - vaccinate! Pet owners should ensure their animals are currently vaccinated through a licensed veterinarian."
Prowers County Director of Public Health Jackie Brown said, "We are very concerned about rabies and very concerned people aren't taking it seriously.
See also: CSU Bison dies of rabies
"On average, 55,000 people worldwide die from rabies every year, but only two or three of those cases happen in the United States, thanks to widespread vaccination of domestic animals and availability of post-bite treatment for humans. Today, when Americans die of rabies, it's usually because they didn't realize they'd been bitten until it was too late—which is to say, when they first noticed symptoms.See, we know how to prevent rabies, but we have absolutely no idea how to cure it. In fact, we don't even really know how it kills people. Despite (and, perhaps, because of) its status as one of the first viruses to be tamed by a vaccine, rabies remains a little-understood disease."
