---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: andrew fildes <afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 06:04:04 +1100
>How serious is the rabies problem?
>Andrew
About this serious. This is from yesterday's Atlanta Journal-
Constitution:
"Raccoons in northwest Georgia can take a break from raiding
garbage cans because officials are treating them to a meal.
"It's not a simple act of kindness. The fish pellets being
distributed in sections of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee have a
hidden ingredient: rabies vaccine.
"In an effort to stop the westward spread of rabies in raccoons,
workers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture are using planes
to drop the pellets in rural areas of Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and
Walker counties in Georgia and eight other counties in northeast
Alabama and southeast Tennessee. They are spreading the bait by
hand in populous areas.
"The program comes a week after the Atlanta-based Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention announced the first human death in
the United States from raccoon rabies. The 25-year-old Virginia
man died last spring.
"Tennessee this year became the 20th state to report rabid
raccoons. They were detected only recently in northern Alabama and
northwest Georgia. The disease first showed up in raccoons in
Florida in the 1950s.
"'We have had raccoon rabies pretty much everywhere else in the
state,' said Susan Lance-Parker, an epidemiologist with the
Georgia Division of Public Health, which is assisting the
USDA. 'We're trying to create a barrier to keep the virus from
moving farther west.'
"Rabid raccoons can infect cats and dogs. People exposed to the
virus must receive multiple injections, at a cost of more than
$2,000, to ward off the usually fatal disease.
"Each of the raccoons' crunchy fishmeal pellets contains a plastic
vial of rabies vaccine with the added antibiotic tetracycline. The
drug stains teeth yellow so researchers can track how many
raccoons have been vaccinated by examining trapped animals and
road kill.
"The program, which started Friday, continues through next week.
The USDA said it will disperse nearly 400,000 pellets, including
about 93,000 in Georgia. Workers from the agency spread the bait
in northeast Tennessee earlier this fall and have been doing so in
other eastern states."
We keep an eye out for any acting wierd, like wandering about in
the daytime or just looking and behaving strange. We feed them by
hand, doling out cookies and lightbread* and other unhealthy
stuff. It's surprising how gently they reach out with their
nearly human hands and take stuff. They come to the glass sliding
doors around our deck and actually stand upright against the
glass, peering in, looking hungry, sad and pitiful, until we serve
them. Which we don't have the willpower not to do.
Walt
*You have to live in the South to know what that is.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists
elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact
us." -- Hobbes
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