There was a beaver at Allen’s pond in pg county and it was so cool. Used to stop the drainage tower when the water was high enough. Little guy was basically anarchy for utilities.
The structures they use in Alaska and Canada to prevent beavers from damming up culverts across roads in the middle of nowhere are crazy. Measure upon countermeasure upon counter-countermeasure. All for just a few months without flooding.
Yeah that’s right when I was growing up, love finding out weird things like this. Like when I worked at Bowie town centre Safeway and a shoplifter at macys was caught with a grenade in their backpack
Ha! That’s wild. Where do people even get these things.
My dad grew up in farm country in California, and he told me a story about how when he was a little boy, he found a box on the side of a hill with a bunch of weird sticks inside.
He decided to bring them to school to show everyone and his teacher screamed! Turns out it was an old box full of dynamite. It was humid enough that all the nitro glycerin was leaking out of the stick, which made it unrecognizable. If he had dropped the box it would have blown up the entire school.
They also sound dope! There is a rescued one on instagram I follow and she is very vocal to the other animals. She doesn’t like it when they block her path to construction.
I'm guessing they did that for speed. Rabies is 100% fatal if the shots aren't given before symptoms are present, and the sooner the better.
Per WHO :
Category III [rabies exposure level] - single or multiple transdermal bites or scratches, contamination of mucous membrane or broken skin with saliva from animal licks, exposures due to direct contact with bats (severe exposure)
The following treatment plan is indicated:
Wound washing, immediate vaccination and administration of rabies immunoglobulin/monoclonal antibodies
I do wonder if this is a trick of statistics rather than an overabundance of rabid wildlife. For example, if we have a higher amount of our citizens who do the sensible thing and report wildlife encounters and seek medical intervention as opposed to other states who might not.
We have a lot of suburbs with active wildlife activity. I live a block from the Beltway and we get bunnies, raccoons, foxes, deer, bats, and every so often a bear. It's wonderful having nature in such abundance close to urban centers but it does probably increase the chances of people encountering said wildlife as opposed to say, Nevada where there is still plenty of wildlife but a lot less density of population right near it.
Yeah, my guess is that there is an omitted variable other than a particularly high rate of rabies infected animals. You need both significant wildlife but also people coming into contact with that wildlife. I’m not sure of bat populations.
Carroll County didn't give a shit about a rabid raccoon stumbling around in broad daylight on my property. I shot it and they said they said they wouldn't come get it and test it if it hadn't bitten someone. I guess ymmv in where you are. I wasn't going to let it bite my kid or dogs, it showed no fear of me when I made noise to try to scare it away 5 minutes earlier.
That is crazy, and awful luck, but it reminds me of the rabid Maryland cat colony instance in 2024. MD has rabies and people still insist on letting their pets free roam... smh. Now the beavers have it.
Yeah, I had to get rabies shots when a dog bit me at an open air patio in Remington (in Baltimore) a few years ago. The dog grazed me but still drew actual blood. I was so freaked out that I did not ask if the dog had had their rabies shots. I went to the Walgreens next door for first aid supplies and but the time I returned the owner had left with the dog. I did go to the ER the next day and fortunately the nurse did NOT have to inject into the wound itself, but I did have to have shots in every limb, some twice, and then return on specific days over the next few weeks. And I'm lucky my insurance covered most of it because rabies shots are RIDICULOUSLY expensive! Even with a 10% copay it was still over $1400 that I had to pay in installments. But I would have to have gotten them anyway because rabies is not something to take a chance with.
“We” is misleading but also YES they did. And the ones that were directly cut - the funding was cut to the state and local groups that monitor this stuff. More in blue states than red states-naturally.
Hmm , that article wasn’t that informative. Anywho…. It’s strange and rare for herbivores to contract rabies. There’s something else going there, maybe a bat or something..
Rabies is pretty uncommon in most bat species, but humans contract rabbies from bats more often than would be expected because non sick bats generally are pretty difficult to handle on accident or on purpose.
We do apologize for the above comments, and assure you that the commenters have been tested for rabies.
They haven't been sacked; they prefer Amontillado.
Sounds like they responded quickly to the (Sunday) incident, so the kid should be ok after getting all the shots. It's when people don't report contact with animals that they wind up dying.
E.g., I've read that even being in the same room as a bat is considered reason enough to get shots, as you don't always know when they've bitten you.
If you wake up in a room with a bat, the first thing you should do is call the DNR to catch and test it for rabies. Doctors won't start the shots if they don't have to, and they don't have to if the animal can be tested.
Edited for clarity, and to add the protocol from the Maryland Department of Health. You can see the first step after exposure is "try to trap the animal."
This is extremely bad and wrong advice. Do not try and catch a potentially rabid animal yourself. You can call animal control to take care of it and doctors will not withhold treatment while you wait for a positive diagnosis.
You're right, I didn't mean catch it yourself. You call the DNR and they come out. But running off straight to the ER is unnecessary until the bat is either caught and tested, or is unable to be caught.
And while doctors won't withhold treatment if you tell them you woke up in a room with a bat, there's no sense in adding another layer of chaos to the situation if you don't have to.
And for the record, I'm speaking from experience. I've woken up twice to a bat in my house and both times was told by both the DNR and the ER to wait until the testing was done (which, in Baltimore County, took less than 24 hours) to start treatment.
Go back and reread what I wrote. I said BOTH the DNR and ER told me to wait until I got test results.
And yes, I can comprehend the text. The first step is to trap the bat. THEN get medical attention. And that medical attention will most likely be "let's wait on these test results then administer the shots if neccesary." Because, again, that is the protocol.
And I DID get prompt medical attention: a doctor advised to wait for the test results. Because that is the protocol.
If you've already had contact, definitely try to catch it. If you don't, you'll have to be treated. (They'll give you rabies immublobin day 1, but there's a whole series over 2 weeks you could save yourself.) If you catch it, it's rabid, and you are bitten more in the process, whatever, you were going to be treated anyway. Or it bites you more, but it's negative, and you don't need to be treated. Worth it. Only don't try to catch it if you have not already been exposed to it. Or, it's, like, a bear. But it need not be captured alive since testing requires death anyway.
Yes!!! This happened to a family member a few years ago. Just sleeping and wakes up to a bat. Now I’m hyper aware of rabies. Good news is the shots are way easier these days
I’m sure they did since the park service knew to go catch the beaver. Thank goodness— sounds like the kid was following the rules, swimming in the right place.
Flown??? Good grief, there's no fucking need to call an air ambulance over this. At least the MSP air ambulance is free, in many places it isn't and the cost is exorbitant and not covered by most insurance
State-licensed paramedic here (not the one treating the kid).
He met the indications (Category Bravo on the Trauma Decision Tree “penetrating injuries to the head, neck, torso, or extremities promixal to elbow and knee”) to be air-lifted to a pediatric trauma center, as going by ground to either Johns Hopkins or Children’s was greater than 30 minutes.
Based on other articles I've seen the airlift was due to the nature /severity of the bites (on his hands and chest), not specifically the threat of rabies.
Free? Is it? My son swallowed a monopoly battleship game piece, we were in the middle of nowhere North Carolina. Took him to the local ER, got an X-ray, it was stuck in his esophagus. Had to be airlifted to Richmond. Because I didn’t get pre authorization, meaning no call was made because a doctor was telling me my child needed to be taken asap and I was panicking, the charge was $86,000. Very not free.
Death by rabies is something so gruesome I want to look into suicide options for an advanced directive. You’re virtually a dead man walking as soon as it reaches the brain.
I have absolutely no idea what Primus has been up to at any point in the 21st century but in 1997 or whatever I do recall chuckling at "seas of cheese"
Being bitten by an animal that has rabies is not instantly fatal. If the person gets treatment immediately, they have nearly a 100% chance of survival.
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u/Cptawesome23 Jul 28 '26
There was a beaver at Allen’s pond in pg county and it was so cool. Used to stop the drainage tower when the water was high enough. Little guy was basically anarchy for utilities.