If you
are infected with the rabies virus to the point of
showing clinical signs, you will die. (Sometimes
certainty is not reassuring.) Fortunately, rabies
also has a unique incubation period of up to a year,
so we are able to vaccinate ourselves after
exposure, but ignoring the immunization protocol has
fatal consequences. For example, a 24-year-old
American soldier was bitten by a dog in Afghanistan
in January. He did nothing. Upon returning to Fort
Drum, NY, in August he began showing clinical signs
and he died in May. Apparently, he never considered
the significance of a dog bite in a country where
rabies is endemic.
Every year several counties across America are
placed under rabies quarantine, so the virus is here
too. By keeping our dog and cat populations
immunized, we lessen the threat, so human rabies is
rare. However, more dangerous than the known bite is
the exposure to a rabies case where you never
considered the disease a possibility. Let me explain
the difference.
Being attacked by a skunk in the middle of the day
suggests the critter has rabies. (The lab needs
intact brain tissue, so do not euthanize the skunk
with a 180 grain, hollow-point, between the eyes.)
Examining the mouth of a cow bellowing and wandering
aimlessly in the pasture, or the horse staring
blindly and salivating are the
did-not-think-of-rabies cases which will kill you.
To be safe, any animal acting odd is considered a
possible rabies threat until proven otherwise. Here
is how testing looks in real life:
When dealing with very small rabies suspects, such
as bats, we typically submit the entire animal to
the state diagnostic lab and let the pathologists
collect the desired tissues. Such was the case
several years back when a client used a broom to
snuff a bat in their house and asked us to check it
for rabies. They placed the winged perpetrator in a
small brown paper sack and handed it to Dr. Moylan.
He placed it in a shipping container with an ice
pack, filled out the lab forms, and sent it to
Bozeman. The following day, the lab personnel read
the lab request, opened the brown paper sack, and
the very much alive and ticked-off bat zoomed out
and clung to a ceiling light fixture. With the
diagnostic lab staff armed with mops, they
eventually subdued the bat and it was tested as
negative for rabies. The pathologist mailed us a
nasty-gram stressing the importance of being certain
dead animals are truly dead prior to shipment. His
logic was flawless. Now I will use this rabies
incident to make my political point.
On April 26th, the Department of Labor rescinded
their effort to impose new strict regulations
regarding child labor on family owned farms and
ranches. Opponents hailed their victorious decision
and went back to work. Unfortunately, this issue is
like a brown paper bag containing a bat; do not
think for a moment this subject is dead. The
progressive goal to shape the subjects of our
welfare state is still alive and free-thinking
independence is completely intolerable to advocates
for bigger government. They will be back.
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