Q: Ace, I heard a rumor that an animal with rabies was caught in City limits last week, supposedly the first one in a really long time. But we hear about rabies pretty frequently. What’s the deal—was there a rabies case, and if so, is it really all that rare?—Diz Ease
A:Charlottesville animal control officer Bob Durrer confirmed for Ace a recent case of rabies in the City. On Wednesday, March 17, Durrer says, he received a call from a woman living near the intersection of Sunset and Wesley in the JPA neighborhood who said she’d been chased by a gray fox. After patrolling the area for about 30 minutes he says he came up with nothing, and stopped to ask a man walking his dog on Piedmont Avenue if he’d seen anything. The man said no, Durrer says, and he got back in his patrol car. While looking in his rearview mirror he saw the man flagging him down. Improbably, at that moment the fox had jumped out of the bushes and attacked the dog-walking citizen’s pooch. After a not-so-merry chase Durrer says he finally caught the fox, which, after being tested by the health department, was diagnosed with rabies, sent to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and destroyed.
Durrer tells Ace he’s been working the job for 23 years, and this is only the second time he’s caught a rabies-infected animal in the City. He says he often sees wildlife with distemper, which leaves them extremely weak. But rabies are a rarity, he says—at least in the City proper.
Cross over into County lines and it’s a little more common. Ace looked at the State Health Department webpage (vdh.state.va.us), which breaks down rabies cases by locality. In 2003 Albemarle had seven found rabies cases, mostly raccoons but also a bat, fox and a skunk. In 2002 there were nine cases.
Donald Hackler, environmental health manager with the Thomas Jefferson Health District, says the disease is still fairly rare. But the health department checks up on all animal bites to make sure rabies—a virus that fatally attacks the nervous system and is transmitted by bites or through contact with infected saliva or brain tissue—is not a concern. He says the best way to protect humans is to vaccinate your pets. (Durrer says that the dog involved in the fox fight had gotten the proper shots, which means fido should be fine after a booster shot.)
Beyond that, Hackler suggests avoiding contact with wild animals. Keep an eye out for critters showing strange behavior, including extreme aggression or loping about in the daytime. That should keep your mouth-frothing encounters to a minimum.