Posted on 07/11/2012 8:38:28 AM PDT by nickcarraway
How far would you go to protect your family's pet? One teenager's encounter with a rabid fox showed just what she would do to defend the dog she loves so much.
"It just looked almost like a pet, like a dog," recalls Kathie Fisher. "Kinda stood there and sniffed the air with its head."
Kathie Fisher recalls her experience about a week ago. She was getting groceries out of her car and turned around to find a wild fox.
"He didn't seem mean or aggressive, it wasn't foaming out the mouth," Fisher said.
Nobody thought anything of it. Then the fox came back the next day and came after Vinny - her daughter Morgan's dog.
"I heard him barking, and I seen the fox grab him and take him out around by the neck, so I panicked and ran outside," Morgan said.
The 16-year-old says from there, she went into attack mode. She says she grabbed the fox up and started choking it. Then she tried to knock the fox out by slamming it into a pole.
Seeing that the fox wasn't giving up, she ran into her kitchen and grabbed a knife.
"I moved my hand and I stabbed him twice," Morgan said. "I thought he was dead so I started getting up and he jumped up and he bit me and scratched me."
It took sheriff's deputies to shoot the fox down, after it attempted to attack them as well. On Monday you could still see three bullet holes in the ground.
The fox was tested and discovered to have rabies, prompting the Department of Health to issue a rabies alert. Morgan and Vinny are currently being treated with rabies shots for the next few weeks.
While most health officials would advise against Morgan's actions, she says it was a no-brainer.
"I didn't want to lose him, I just got him," Morgan said. "I don't care what would have happened to me, as long as he was safe."
That rabies alert is still in effect in Gulf County. Health officials are urging you to stay away from wild animals.
It’s a Remington 870 modified into what the BATF calls an AOW meaning any other weapon (sawed off shotgun) under their regulations. They have to be registered with the feds. Other than that, if your state allows it, you’re good to go.
Actually it’s 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999%. One kid survived.
True!
As stated elsewhere on this thread, you suspect rabies any time a wild animal acts abnormally friendly. Especially nocturnal animals walking around in the day time. In early stages they don’t look different, but in later stages they may staffer, or may foam at the mouth. It doesn’t take much exposure to catch the disease, and it is almost always fatal unless treated immediately with a series of shots.
We had the case of a young girl here in Wisconsin exposed when she found a bat on the floor of her church at choir practice. She picked it up and carried it outside. In so doing, the bat scratched her; but she didn’t think anything about it. She fell sick several weeks later and was saved by a doctor with an experimental treatment. She lost a year of school and had to be retrained to walk and talk. She’s in college now (or has just graduated) and wants to become a vet. Unfortunately, the treatment that saved her is yet to be replicated in anyone else. The patients all died.
She is a miracle.
staffer=stagger
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