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Re: [OM] Two questions

Subject: Re: [OM] Two questions
From: "Walt Wayman" <hiwayman@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:38:15 -0500


---------- 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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