Article from: Oct. 28, 2024
By BUFFY POLLOCK, Rogue Valley Times
Rabies fears grip Butte Falls after a young girl is bit and multiple foxes test positive, leaving residents on high alert.
FOTAS responds with a weekend low-cost vaccine clinic to safeguard the community’s beloved pets of Southern Oregon from the growing threat.
Butte Falls residents vigilant after four foxes test positive for rabies
Low-cost FOTAS vaccine clinic planned this weekend to boost immunity for area dogs and cats
Art Ingraham recounts finding a rabid fox near a preschool facility at The Landing, a community center co-created by the Butte Falls School District and the town of Butte Falls. Tasha Langley (right) pets Ingraham’s dog, Shasta.
Residents of the valley’s smallest town have been on high alert since mid-September when the first of several foxes turned up showing symptoms of rabies.
County officials and organizers for Friends of the Animals (FOTAS) are hopeful that a vaccine clinic this weekend will increase vaccination rates in the town to ensure dogs and cats are protected in the event additional cases show up.
To register for this special low-cost vaccination and microchip event click here.
Four animals discovered by residents in recent weeks were dispatched and collected by county and state wildlife officials. All four tested positive, though residents say additional animals, exhibiting similar symptoms, have shown up since.
Fourteen-year-old Tasha Langley, who found the first of the four rabid foxes, was walking toward downtown to buy a soda from the store when she saw a small kit lying near the middle of Laurel Avenue.
Miranda Thompson, Langley’s mother, said her daughter had only been gone from home for a few minutes when she called, sounding noticeably upset. With questionable cell phone reception in the town, Thompson couldn’t make out what had happened and ran outside to check on her daughter.
“We don’t have the best cell phone service up here, but I was like, ‘I think she got bit by something,” Thompson remembers.
“Finally, I figured out she was saying, ‘I got bit by a fox!’ She had flung it off her hand. … Her dad washed the wound, and then I drove her immediately to the emergency room.”
Thompson said she wasn’t initially thinking about rabies as a possible outcome of the bite, but she worried about infection. The bite happened so unexpectedly, Langley said, she couldn’t pull her hand away in time.
“I was just mainly looking to see if it was OK or if I could help in some way. I thought it had been hit by a car because it wasn’t using its back legs,” she said of the apparently wounded fox.
“I was assessing the situation, but I had a (Mountain Dew) Baja Blast in the back of my mind. … Then the fox walked toward me. I didn’t process that that wasn’t normal and then it just suddenly lunged at my hand and wouldn’t let go. I had to fling it off into the trees to get it off.”
Worried for the safety of neighborhood dogs who might cross the fox’s path, Thompson told her daughter to text neighbor Art Ingraham, who works at The Landing, a community center nearby.
“As soon as we started to drive, I told Tasha to call Art, because he has his dogs over there and he needed to know that there was an injured fox somewhere near him,” Thompson said.
Butte Falls resident Art Ingraham, left, and 14-year-old Tasha Langley discuss several rabies cases that began last month in Butte Falls.
Once in Medford, emergency room doctors immediately started the teen on rabies vaccination protocol — as a precaution — which would include seven shots spread across 14 days. The day after the teen was bit, Ingraham’s dog Shasta spotted the fox near a fence line. The animal walked directly toward Ingraham.
“I caught it under a milk crate. I knew right away that something wasn’t right with it,” Ingraham said.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials dispatched the animal and took it for testing.
To register for this special low-cost vaccination and microchip event click here.
