Rabid animals were found in Lewiston, Lisbon, Sabattus and Hartford in the past two weeks.
Rabies has flared up again.
In Sabattus, a family found a rabid bat in the basement. In Lisbon, a rabid skunk attacked a dog twice. And in Lewiston, four people have begun a battery of vaccination shots after they touched a rabid raccoon.
Across Androscoggin County, at least four confirmed cases have been identified in the past two weeks.
“It can happen any time of year,” said Wendell Strout, animal control officer for Lewiston and several area towns. “It’s our turn.”
According to the Maine Bureau of Health, the county had 10 cases in 2002. There have already been 15 this year.
It’s not just a local phenomenon, either.
Across Maine, 67 cases of rabies were cataloged last year. This year there have been 60 so far.
“By year’s end we expect to see a rise in numbers of cases,” said Geoff Beckett, assistant state epidemiologist.
Cases tend to come in peaks and valleys, he said. This year’s a peak. It’s no surprise to local animal control officers.
On Sunday Jeff Cooper, the animal control officer for Lisbon and Sabattus, was attacked by a rabid skunk in Lisbon Falls near Huston Park. The skunk had already attacked a dog and fled. When the dog’s owners cleaned up their pet and left him outside for a few minutes, the skunk came back. It attacked the dog again.
When Cooper arrived, the skunk attacked him. Normally, skunks act like docile cats.
“This skunk was crazy,” Cooper said.
That same day, Cooper was called to the Sabattus home of Guy Desjardins, whose son Brian had found a sick bat in the basement of his father’s Route 9 home.
By Wednesday afternoon, Desjardins had to leave work to begin a painful and costly series of vaccine shots with his wife. His son, who serves in the U.S. Navy, began the shots on Tuesday.
“Now I’ve got to get my house bat-proofed,” said Desjardins, who is chief deputy for the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department. He has hired people to seal the cracks around his roof and chimney where he thinks the bat crept in. And he has been forced to quarantine his cat for 45 days, just in case its rabies shot didn’t protect it enough.
Experts say pets desperately need their shots.
“At these rates, it’s critically important that dogs and cats are up to date on their vaccines,” said Beckett, whose office is part of the state Department of Human Services.
He also stressed that cases of human illness are rare. Nationally, there are between one and three each year. Maine hasn’t had a case since the 1930s, Beckett said.
It doesn’t mean people should let their guard down, though.
An estimated 1 percent of the bat population carries the virus. Small animals, especially raccoons, account for the increase in recent years, Beckett said.
Of the 15 rabies cases recorded in Androscoggin County this year, 11 were raccoons.
In the Oxford County town of Hartford, Mike and Sarah Burdick were working in their garden Sunday with their 19-month-old daughter when a raccoon came out of the woods.
It reared on its hind legs and hissed when approached by the family’s German shepherd. Mike Burdick killed the raccoon with a high-powered pellet gun.
The case was the first in the Hartford-Turner area for more than a year, said Shawn Theriault, a Maine Warden.
Staff writer Gail Geraghty contributed to this report.
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