A skunk bit a SNP visitor near the Whiteoak Boundary parking area and the Park confirmed yesterday the skunk had rabies.
A skunk bit a SNP visitor near the Whiteoak Boundary parking area and the Park confirmed yesterday the skunk had rabies.
Oh no, I hope that person gets treatment. People forget that rabies is nearly 100% fatal.
sucks for that person, but is "rabid skunk" really news? i kind of assume there are pretty much always rabid animals around somewhere. i don't think i read any necessity to take extra precaution into the fact that one of them was discovered biting someone.
Man that stinks!
"Sleepy alligator in the noonday sun
Sleepin by the river just like he usually done
Call for his whisky
He can call for his tea
Call all he wanta but he can't call me..."
Robert Hunter & Ron McKernan
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Im sure they will.
Fortunately rabies moves slowly to the brain, about 3" per day. When bitten on extremities, most common is hands, a person has 1-2 weeks to receive prophylactic treatment. Time to observe the animal or test it. If bitten on head or neck.....there can be no delay at all. Being bitten by bat while sleeping can be extremely dangerous because often to head neck area.
Several people have survived now with an experimental treatment protocol by placing them in a coma. Before this...it was 100% fatal.
Last edited by MuddyWaters; 05-11-2019 at 10:20.
I would like to know the details of the skunk encounter if anyone knows.Sorry to hear it happened.
I'm surprised bats don't roost at shelters and infect people.One more reason to avoid them.
If you ever get a bat in your house and you can't capture it - or rather you let it go freely by opening a window and encouraging it out because you're an animal lover - protocol is to get rabies shots because bat bites are often not felt. I've never seen bats in a shelter so I assume its not a problem, but the comment does carry some merit.
p.s. worst thing about rabies shots is not the shots themselves (not anymore), but rather the disorganized way in which you often have to get them - ER's will say they don't have them, same hospitals typically have them at retail cost for the non-admitted visit, and public clinics are used so much that they are often short of supply. It was a royal PITA, and obviously a very short period of time to figure it out (though I never really worried that we were bitten).
"I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe... ?"
- Kate Chopin
nearly 100% fatal AFTER nuerological problems develop but with treatment PRIOR to onset of nuerological problems the outlook is VERY GOOD.
Vaccination after exposure, PEP, is highly successful in preventing the disease if administered promptly, in general within 6 days of infection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies
https://tinyurl.com/MyFDresults
A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. ~Paul Dudley White