Why foxes are bad news in T'burg

This just in the local paper this morning:

Rabid fox bites child in T-burg

By Raymond Drumsta
Journal Staff

TRUMANSBURG — The Tompkins County Health Department issued stern warnings about rabies after a child was attacked by a fox Monday morning in Trumansburg.

“Rabies is here,” said Frank Chase, a public health sanitarian for the health department. There have been 11 confirmed cases of rabid raccoons and one confirmed case of a rabid bat in Tompkins County in 2008, he added.

“The fox caught rabies by being bitten by a raccoon,” he said, adding that this number of raccoon rabies cases is an epidemic.

In a statement released Tuesday the health department said rabies is a viral disease that can infect any mammal, including humans. It is usually transmitted by the rabid animal's saliva, often through a bite or a scratch.

Chase said the fox bit the child on the ankle, and when the child was holding the fox around the neck with her hands, it bit her wrists. A Trumansburg police officer separated the child and fox and then shot the fox, he added.

“The policeman had to knock it off the child before he could shoot it,” Chase said. The fox tested positive for rabies, the health department said.

“The child is receiving rabies post-exposure shots, as are three other people who also had contact with the fox,” health department officials said.

Chase stressed that different strains of rabies are epidemic in different animals.

“Rabid raccoons usually attack dogs, and are usually killed by the dog, or the dog's owner,” he said. “Rabid foxes usually go after people.”

There are cases of raccoon and bat rabies in New York state, but no cases of fox rabies except perhaps the state's northeast corner, near the Quebec border, Chase said.

“Otherwise, we'd be having a lot more of these fox attack incidents,” he said. “We're having rabid raccoon incidents all the time, but the raccoons are not attacking people.”