KENNETH FRAZER
WESTFIELD – Parents in the Eastwood Acres neighborhood of the city will be well advised to stay close to their children when they are outside after three children were bitten by a presumably rabid fox in roughly one hour period Monday evening.
Only one of the incidents – at 5:55 p.m. on Leaview Drive – was reported to police but investigators quickly learned that two other children had been taken to Noble Hospital for treatment after encounters with a fox, presumably the same one.
Kenneth Frazer, the director of the city’s animal control operations, said Tuesday that one person who has seen the fox said that it looked “kinda scrungy” and went on to say “If he went after three kids, chances are he’s got rabies.”
Frazer said that the attacks have not caused serious injuries and said that the children were bitten through clothing so their injuries have been scrapes rather than puncture wounds. He said there have been “no punctures that I know of” but, nonetheless, said “at least one or two are being treated for rabies.”
He said that the modern rabies treatment is less painful than the classic therapy – 13 painful injections in the abdomen – and now requires “a series of three shots over a period of three or four days” which are administered in more conventional sites, such as an arm or buttocks.
Noises, such as lawn mowers or leaf blowers, sometimes attract the attention of a rabid animal, Frazer said, and then “it goes right after them.”
He advises that parents “keep the kids next to them” when they’re outside and said they should “keep something handy” they can use to hit a fox if one approaches.
He said that he had been out “combing the area” Tuesday morning but said that the fox that attacked the children is a limited danger because it will soon be dead.
However, rabies “happens everywhere” Frazer said and, once it appears, rabies will spread throughout the animal community of an area.
He said that within 10-14 days of becoming infected, the rabies virus will reach an animal’s brain and cause it to behave unusually before it succumbs to the virus.
The fox which has bitten children in Eastwood Acres will die “within 72 hour of (the rabies virus) hitting the brain”, Frazer said, but added “There’s other animals in the area” so the fox could infect other wildlife by biting, or being bitten by, another animal. And, an animal can infect others after it dies if another animal eats from the carcass.
Frazer said that eventually the last infected animal in an area will die off but said “it depends on the density” of the animal population in a given neighborhood.
Children who are bitten by a fox or other wild animal should get immediate treatment and Frazer said that residents who suspect that a pet may have been bitten by a wild animal should have their pet treated too.
He said that, although all dogs, cats and ferrets in the city are required to be vaccinated for rabies, those inoculations should not be considered to be an absolute protection, especially if a pet’s annual rabies shot is not recent.
Even if a pet has had its required rabies vaccination, Frazer said “You have no way of knowing if the animal is safe or not” so all pets believed to have been in contact with a rabid wild animal should be taken for veterinary care where a booster shot may be recommended.
