The Rabies Spectator/Stop Me Before I Don't Shoot!
Norman, Geoffrey
Stop Me Before I Don't Shoot! by Geoffrey Norman The old pioneer spirit was made up of many parts, one of which was a sense that sometimes it came down to kill or be killed. The first European...
...Somewhere in that suburban oasis, there must be someone with the nerve to face down a sick raccoon...
...So in some communities, "a resident has no option except a private trapper...
...To handle a raccoon...
...She called the Executive Deputy Commissioner of the State Department of Environment Conservation (who probably could have handled the problem by hitting the animal over the head with his title) and was told that, while there were "public officials who can remove SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCS, CHANNEL 3, CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE KTVN, CHANNEL 2, RENO, NEVADA WITS, 92.3 FM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WGCL, 1370 AM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WAJI, 95.1 FM, FORT WAYNE, INDIANA CENTRAL OFFICE, BOX 62, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47402 TELEPHONE: 812 332 7251 Providing the Rest Radio and Television Service 73 a rabid animal, they were scattered haphazardly through the state...
...Then one morning it was gone...
...The same animal whose fur Davy Crockett wore on his head at the Alamo and Scott Fitzgerald wore around his shoulders at the Dartmouth game, that common mammal (cousin to the bear, by the way) that never gets much bigger than the average Springer Spaniel, has East Coast suburbanites living in fear and calling for Geoffrey Norman is a contributing editor of FYI...
...So the helpful lawman suggested that she might want to call a "trapper...
...Rodell told her children to stay inside...
...The policeman told Ms...
...Which is worse news than any epidemic of rabies, a disease that comes and goes...
...The first European settlers had to feed themselves—there was game but they had to kill it...
...One of those animals with the bandit eyes and the charming habit of first washing the things they are going to eat...
...Then again, maybe not...
...But Ms...
...trees were abundant but they had to be dropped, topped, and notched or ripped into boards...
...Rodell then asked, "In other words, they shoot the animal...
...Save her a trip...
...She located a "licensed trapper of nuisance wildlife...
...He told her his fee was $65 per animal caught...
...When the pioneers encountered an animal that was rabid, or possibly rabid, there was nothing ambiguous in their response...
...So Ms...
...But every day one is reminded of just how anemic the blood of Americans has become...
...Rodell he couldn't do anything about it...
...They had to find shelter...
...Rodell, it seems, could not take a hint: I kept the kids indoors while [the raccoon] spent two unhappy days moving from branch to branch in the old maple tree...
...Rabies, as both the policeman and Ms...
...Thus, there's a small danger that some creature in the neighborhood—animal or human—could be carrying the virus, which is asymptomatic until just days before the victim dies...
...He had said there was, nothing he could do...
...From being the kind of people who would stand up to a grizzly with a black powder Hawken, Americans have declined to the point where they are rendered helpless by the threat of a raccoon...
...Some of his competitors charged three times as much and some, he said, "even charged consultation fees, like a brain surgeon or something...
...L ast summer, a story called "Rabies in the Suburbs" appeared in the New York Times's "Editorial Notebook" section...
...When there was a grizzly at the door, you would reach for your piece and hope your primer powder was dry...
...Yes...
...CI The American Spectator December 1993...
...I still worry that in my county, at least, there are no public officials who can remove what is clearly a public danger...
...And then, there were hostile animals—human and animal—that had to be either tamed or killed...
...Licensed...
...And, apparently, there was nothing Ms...
...But it was panting visibly, and flies buzzed around its head...
...All because Ms...
...Then she picked up the telephone and called the cops...
...Rodell could not bring herself to do what the pioneers would have done in a heartbeat—kill the damned raccoon and bury it too deep for another animal to dig it up...
...What she found was a "very unhappy and bedraggled-looking raccoon, missing half its tail . . . peering through the screen...
...An officer arrived ten minutes later (which is one reason to live in Westchester County) and found that the raccoon had climbed a tree in the backyard...
...Rodell presumably knew, had reached epidemic levels in the northeast, especially among raccoons...
...This other thing, though, must surely be terminal...
...Ms...
...the government—any government—to do something...
...I have no way of knowing whether it later "interacted" with any of my neighbors' pets or children...
...RodeII's children were forced to stay inside—and the lives of her neighbors threatened—because of an animal that probably didn't weigh thirty pounds...
...Animals—and people—get rabies when they are bitten by an already infected animal...
...Rodell...
...And if a person couldn't afford one...
...Or bash it over the head," the Executive Deputy Commissioner suggested helpfully...
...Surely somebody in Westchester owns a 22...
...Its author, Susanna Rodell, described in detail her experience with a raccoon, at her home in Westchester County...
...Rodell was willing to do...
...Rodell reports, plainly aware of thepossibility that the animal was rabid...
...Well, said the Executive Deputy Commissioner, "In this situation some people exercise self-help...
...And if she couldn't bring herself to kill an obviously dying and diseased (and very likely rabid) animal, then couldn't she have called around the neighborhood...
...But he assured her that "If it has rabies, it'll die soon and fall out of the tree...
...Her ordeal began when one of her children screamed to her that there was "an animal at the door...
...Then she could use the shovel to dig the grave...
...If it is not diagnosed (which is tricky) and promptly treated (which is painful), rabies is always fatal...
...m s. Rodell and the Westchester policeman were considerably less decisive...
...If she did not have a gun, then the flat blade of a shovel would do nicely...
...The price, evidently, seemed steep to Ms...
...People whose ancestors hanged horse thieves now put signs reading "radio already stolen" in the windows of their cars...
...Ms...
...It wasn't foaming at the mouth," Ms...
...Even if it meant leaving your late twentieth-century descendants with a terrible and unrelieved sense of guilt, the choice was what nowadays is called a no-brainer...
...Not on her own, anyway...
...If you can't afford the services of [a trapper], you're stuck—and so are all your neighbors—with a lethal threat...
Vol. 26 • December 1993 • No. 12
