recent attacks have the public on their toes

Burt John Allen III spends his summer days mowing lawns in his Newmarket neighborhood on two antique tractors. The work offers him a few extra bucks and a way to relax in the New England heat. But a recent day of mowing on Garrison Smith Avenue proved less than relaxing.

Allen was passing under a tree branch on a strip of grass by the roadside on the morning of June 30 when an animal estimated to weigh 30 pounds leapt from a height of about 14 feet and landed on his back, digging its claws into his side and sinking its teeth into his arm. “I don’t know where he learned that stunt,” Allen said. “He had me pegged right in the seat, munching away.”

He struck the creature three times with his fist before it released its grip and fell from the tractor to stagger off into the woods. Allen used a towel to soak up the blood from several puncture wounds in his arm. He is diabetic, and his thin blood flows liberally from even the smallest scratch. Several days after the attack, his knuckles were still sore from striking the animal.

Allen is no stranger to wildlife. He regularly sees foxes and deer outside his home beside the Lamprey River, a short distance from Great Bay, and a neighbor recently spotted a black bear in his backyard. But he had never seen anything quite like the animal that attacked him that morning. It resembled an unusually large fisher cat, only its face was flatter and its snout less pronounced. His best guess is that the creature was some kind of hybrid—a fisher cat crossbred with something else.

In any case, the animal’s aggressive behavior suggests that it had rabies. When Allen called the police following the incident, the officer called in a representative from N.H. Fish and Game, who instructed Allen to go to the hospital. He declined the services of an ambulance and drove to Wentworth Douglass Hospital in Dover, where he underwent a series of eight painful shots and received a schedule of dates to return for follow-up appointments with the needle. 

Although the treatment was unpleasant, the alternative was even less appealing. Allen said the doctors gave him a dubious pair of options. “You have two choices: you can go through the routine, or we can quarantine you,” he said the doctors told him. “I got the point.”

Allen is not the only area resident who has received rabies treatment this year. Animal authorities believe a gray fox bit a Lee man and chased a horse in May, and a rabid woodchuck bit a six-year-old girl in Auburn last month, according to news reports. A rabid fox bit a girl and her mother in Londonderry last month, and another fox bit an 11-year-old girl on the hand in Danville on July 2. In April, a rabid raccoon bit a dog in Milton. 

Despite the seemingly high number of cases, Dr. Jose Montero, of the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services public health division said it is not unusual for people to be bitten by wild animals during the spring and early summer. “This is not an abnormal year,” Montero said. “What usually happens is that the spring and summer come around and people start to get out more and more and more. The chances for interaction with wild animals increases.”

Most human exposure to rabies results from people approaching animals and not the other way around, Montero said. Although rabid animals are classically portrayed as crazed beasts, foaming at the mouth and randomly attacking citizens, Montero said it is not always easy to tell whether a specimen is infected with the virus. “If we see an animal staggering, having problems walking straight, or if you see the famous foamy mouth, that is a given. But other than that, there is no specific signs that will tell us that the animal is sick,” he said. “Our message is, ‘don’t play with wildlife.’ Just leave that to the people that know how to do it.”

Rabies is a viral disease that infects the central nervous system of mammals, causing encephalitis and almost always resulting in death if allowed to develop. It is usually transmitted between animals by bite, most commonly infecting wild carnivores like raccoons, skunks, foxes and bats. Domestic animals such as cattle, dogs and cats often fall victim to rabies, but human cases are exceptionally rare in the United States. A century ago, around 100 people died of rabies in the country every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By the 1990s, however, that number had dwindled to one or two deaths per year. The number of cases in domestic animals has also dropped significantly since the 1950s.

But rabies still takes a toll on the nation. According to the CDC, more than $300 million is spent annually on vaccinations, animal control programs, lab maintenance and medical costs associated with rabies. Symptoms of the virus include difficulty breathing, hydrophobia, coma and muscle paralysis so severe that patients cannot swallow their own saliva. These symptoms often take weeks to manifest themselves, but once they appear, chances of survival are extremely slim, Montero said.

Because rabies causes inflammation of the brain, it can cause humans and animals to behave strangely, Montero said. The passage from Zora Neal Hurston’s novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” in which Tea Cake loses his mind after being bitten by a rabid dog and attempts to shoot his girlfriend, might not be far-fetched. “Certainly, with inflammation of the brain you can get into a coma, but before that it changes your mental status,” Montero said.

The last full-blown case of human rabies in New Hampshire occurred in 1996, when a man contracted the virus from a dog in Nepal and then traveled back home. Between 1990 and 2001, there were 36 confirmed cases of human rabies in the United States, almost all of which resulted from bat or dog bites, according to the CDC.

There were 7,437 cases of rabies reported in the United States in 2001, according to the CDC. Wild animals accounted for more than 93 percent of those cases, with raccoons leading the pack with 2,767 reports. Skunks followed with 2,282 reports, and bats came in third with 1,281 cases. Next came foxes, followed by an assortment of animals with low numbers of cases, including mongoose, groundhogs, bobcats, beavers, coyotes, otters, rabbits, badgers, opossums, a chipmunk and a deer. Cases in domestic animals have decreased in dogs but increased in cats in recent years, according to the CDC. Only one human case was reported in 2001.

Elsewhere in the world, numbers of rabies deaths are much higher. A survey conducted by the World Health Organization in 1997 found that between 35,000 and 50,000 people die annually from rabies worldwide. The highest concentration of deaths occurred in Asia, with an estimated 30,000 occurring in India alone. Four deaths occurred in the United States that year, according to the survey.

Rabies is most commonly transmitted to humans through bites, although it can also be contracted through direct exposure to a rabid animal’s saliva in the eyes, mouth, nostrils or an open wound. Vaccinations are available at most hospitals, but Montero said the vaccine is only necessary for people who treat rabies or regularly work with wild animals.

If bitten by a wild animal, Montero advises people to go to the hospital for treatment. Sometimes an animal control officer or Fish and Game representative will get involved and have the animal tested, if it can be found. Rabies treatment includes a dose of immune globulin and several doses of rabies vaccine over a month-long period.

Allen said each shot “makes your muscle feel like it’s gonna explode.” But he’s not about to take any chances. Hospital staff burned the clothes he was wearing at the time of the attack, and he must return for more shots once a week until the end of the month. He is hoping his insurance will cover the medical costs. 

Allen worries the virus could spread to other animals in his neighborhood, and he fears many residents are unaware of the threat. He noted that there is a nearby campground in Newfields, where people often sleep on the ground. “Would you wanna lay on a goddamn air mat with a fisher aggressive like that?” he asked.

Nationally, a number of bizarre rabies incidents have occurred in recent weeks. FOX News reported that a five-year-old boy pinned down a rabid fox in North Carolina for over a minute on July 1 to protect his younger brother. The boy’s father later beat the fox to death with a stick and a crutch. The Associated Press reported that a 62-year-old man strangled a rabid bobcat to death in Florida last month when it attacked him on his porch. The Associated Press also reported that a rabid otter attacked and bit three people in Florida this spring.

Freaky.