Welcome to episode seven of Get Out Alive podcast, where me, your host
Ashley, comes at you every week with a new animal tech story, and
me, the other host, Nick, comes at you with some wild,
stupid questions and basically have no idea what'm talking about. And that's why we
love you. I need my role on this podcast. Please do not find
anyone stupider than me. So today it's part two of our coyote episode.
So last week we talked about the Colorado coyote attack and got into a lot
of history about coyotes, which I found super interesting and love love talking about.
So you're gonna get more of that today, whether or not you liked
it. Sorry, I'm sure it's gonna be a So it's split. Yeah,
Well, I mean, like I said before, a lot of people
have their strong opinions about coyotes, so you are one of them. I
don't have that hard of opinions on them. You talk about this animal more
than any other one I know, which is weird because like I don't even
count them as one of my top five favorites. So I don't know why
I have such hard opinions. But I am a white woman, so I
have a lot of hard coyote sympathizer. Yeah is that a bad thing?
No? Okay, we like you said it like it was like, ooh,
you're one of those. Anyways, today we're talking about a local story
that actually happened in twenty twenty, so it's pretty recent. Should we just
get into it? Yeah, yeah, let's do it all right. January
twentieth, twenty twenty, Ian O'Reilly is hiking with this family when similarly out
of nowhere coyote started to approach them, and he first noticed it at the
corner of his eye, and they kind of tried to like show it off,
but it pretty quickly came after his son, his two year old son,
and grabbed his son's jacket's hood and dragged him to the ground. So
naturally, his parents were like absolutely not, and the mom acted instantly and
was able to somehow separate the coyote from her son. It doesn't really give
details there, but the boy managed to escape without being bitten, so just
his clothes are really tugged on. So Ian the father rushed between the coyote
and his family, which cost him a couple aggressive attacks from the coyote,
so it jumped it bit him on the arms on his chest, and when
he realized it wasn't going to leave, he just straight up kicked it in
the head and then pinned it to the ground and he was able to grab
its snout with one of his hands and then place his other hand on its
windpipe. He told his family to leave and like urged them to go get
help or whatever, and as they left, he sat there for ten minutes
with his hand on that coyote's neck and strangled it to death, which really
is Jesus. Yeah, that's a really intimate way to kill something or some
So, I mean he had no other option. Yeah, when it's going
after you, like, do you have a choice unless you have something with
you, like a knife or a gun. That's kind of the next option.
Yeah. And of course they're assuming that it's rabbid. Well, yeah,
just jumped out of the woods and starry attacking people like there's something wrong
with it. Yeah. So actually, in twenty nineteen, his four year
old son was bitten by a rabid raccoon. What what is going on on
in Kensington? I don't know. It sounds like a rough time, Yeah,
getting calls from there for work. No, I actually haven't. Maybe
you should, maybe maybe they should start calling. Yeah, well it sounds
like after this they got things sorted out. But yeah, so obviously they
were assuming, like he was, assuming this is rabid. I gotta kill
it because it's not going to stop. And I've already been bitten once,
so I'm gonna have to get treated anyways. Yeah, I already got to
go to the hospital. Yeah, so he killed it, and he said
he wasn't really thinking a whole lot when it happened. He just acted,
yeah, you know, like I said, it wasn't disengaging from them,
so he felt like they had no other option but to kill it and just
had his bare hands and no weapons. So, however, in the same
town that morning, there were two other coyote attacks, presumably by the same
animal. Oh whoa. Yeah, so the first was in Hampton Falls,
which is also by the coast, and that was at eight point forty in
the morning when the coyote attacked a vehicle. So that's usually another sign to
biologists or honestly law enforcement, if an animal is attacking a vehicle, especially
a wild animal, that's not a great sign. No, I think you
again would need something to be wrong in the brain to uh want to attack
a car. Yeah. So then at nine am, just twenty minutes later,
a woman in Kensington called the police and said that she and her two
dogs were attacked by a coyote. So her two dogs were bitten and she
was trying to get them into the house and the coyote bit her on the
butt. It's a bad morning. Her name was The woman who was bitten
in the butt was pat Lee and she was sixty two years old. Oh
poor Patly. Her dogs already had their rabiy shots because it's legally required to
which we talked about in the last episode. But yeah, so she had
to go get her a series of shots too. And Ian O'Reilly received his
first rounds of raby shots immediately after the attack. But he has four more
remaining or had they currently? Okay, no, so he got the rabies
shots exist like something you once you get bit, you have to keep getting
these shots forever and everyone. No. No, so he got his first
rounds of rabies vaccines that day, but he had to go back and get
four more treatments, which is pretty typical, especially he was bitten so many
times. Yeah, I mean he was wrestling at rabbit coyote, or what
we assume to be a rabbit coyote considering it's attacking people and dogs and cars
because it's stupid. Yes, so it was confirmed by the health department in
this case that the coyote was rapid. So that being said, let's talk
about rabies. Is it possible that you worked on this coyotes's brain at some
point or it's samples? No? So I okay, So first and background,
I'm not going to say exactly who I work for, because I don't
think I'm really allowed to, but I do work for an organization that has
rabies in the name, so needless to set well, at least for half
the time, my job is weird, so we only test animals that are
found dead or our roadkill or whatever. If they've been exposed to humans or
pets, it immediately goes to the state Health department. Gotcha. So I
don't do any of that, But I have picked up a lot of dead
animals and had to cut their brains out because fun fact, the only way
you could test for rabies is to cut off an animal's head and scoop out
the brainstem because that's where it's localized. So if you touch a wild animal
that you're not supposed to, like a rabies vector species like foxes, skunks,
coyotes, raccoons, they have to kill the animal to test it to
see if it's rabid, and then if it's not, it's just sad of
for everyone because now it's a dead animal for no reason. Exactly. Yeah.
I had a woman call me and she was like, oh, my
little daughter, we kept finding these skunks under a porch, and you know,
we found two baby ones and I told her not to touch them,
and I turned around for two seconds and turn back and she was holding them.
So you know, they had to get tested for rabies. I was
like, yeah, you understand that means they died, right, Like,
that's no job. Head shopped off. Yeah, fun times. Is there
a way to test for in humans or is it the same thing. You
can only get to it from the brain stem, so you just get treatment
forever and ever and hope your brain doesn't start to eat itself. There's no
way to test in humans unless you took out the brain stem. So if
you are exposed to an animal that's suspected to have rabies, we just assume
that you get the shots, or that you'll need the shots. So that's
kind of how that works. You don't need the shots forever. You just
need like essentially a treatment of them and then you're good. But obviously if
you get exposed again, then you'll need more shots. So it's a bad
time, makes sense. Getting bit by anything is a bad time. Yeah,
So a raby's exposure can look like a lot of things. So I
think the scariest one, and the one that people probably don't think of,
is if you have a bat in your room while you're sleeping, oh,
because you might not even know, yeah exactly, because they might just crawl
on you and bite you and they're so little that you might wake up but
not realize that something bit you. Yep. So or I just think like,
oh, I got bit by a bug or something like, not even
consider it exactly. And there's different strains of rabies, so they're at least
in the Northeast, there's raccoon rabies and then there is bat rabies. So
I work with raccoon rabies because we're working to eliminate it completely because we actually
have already eliminated canine rabies from the US. Yeah, that's why it's illegal
to not vaccinate your dog every year because that's how we got rid of canine
rabies. Yeah, I don't know if anyone's ever been like, nah,
I don't believe in that raby's vaccine because it's like, oh, it will
kill. There's only one person who's ever survived rabies and they had to put
her in a coma for a long time. Is she like a superhuman now
or is she like superman? No, but she didn't go on to have
kids, so like, yeah, so she it worked out for her.
But yeah, she's the only person that's ever happened to So, but canine
rabies is still a huge thing in other countries, like I know India,
so many people die a year from canine rabies. Like it's no joke if
it's so many wild dogs out there and they're all rabid. Yeah, so
fun fact, let's back up. So dogs used to just run loose and
packs around Boston and this does tie into coyotes, I promise. Eventually there
was a huge rabies outbreak in Boston with dogs, so canine rabies and there
were so many of them, super hard to avoid, just random dogs in
the street, you know. So that's really when we first came up with
the current leash laws that we have, where you know, you have to
keep your dog in a leash and under your control, keep it in your
yard, whatever. So that all started in Boston because of canine rabies.
But when we decided that to keep our dogs, you know, close to
our house in our backyards on leashes, and there were no more roaming packs
of wild dogs, that's when coyotes moved into cities. We mentioned in the
last episode that there's bounties out for coyotes in some states still to this day.
And when I think of bounties being placed on animals, I think of
states out wet or down south. Yeah, but I guess it actually started
in New England as early as like the sixteen hundreds, because if you're not
familiar with New England the northeastern United States, the primary big predator we have
is coyotes, Like that's pretty much it. Black bears, they're not really
considered a predator. And another thing I wanted to mention that we didn't mention
the first coyote episode, just to show you how much we hate coyotes,
or at least used to. Yale did a poll back in the nineteen eighties
about public perception about a bunch of different animals, and coyotes were dead last,
and this pole included rattlesnakes, rats, cockroaches, vultures, like people
hated them so much. It just doesn't make sense to me. I don't
understand why people. It doesn't make sense to me either. I mean,
rabies is scary, and I can understand being afraid of that, But there's
so many animals that are rabies vectors, so I guess for more information here,
rabies only affects mammals, so bats are mammals. There's a bat strain,
raccoons, The raccoons strain. Coyotes, foxes, skunks, rodents can
get rabies, but they tend to not survive long enough to pass it on.
Makes sense, Yeah, And the thing with rabies is that there's a
lot of contradictory symptoms. So some animals might act drunk and like stumble,
and then some might not present any symptoms at all. Some things might be
afraid of people, and some might go towards people, yeah, attack them
and cars and other dogs. Yeah, exactly. And I think something that's
really cool that I learned So there's this podcast called This Podcast Will Kill You
and it's all about diseases, and they have an episode about rabies. I
believe it's their fourteenth episode. If you're interested in learning more, go check
it out. They do a fantastic job. So have you ever heard that
a symptom of rabies is being afraid of water? No? Yeah, that's
a common symptom that people are usually familiar with. And if you listen to
that podcast, they'll tell you it's not that they're afraid of water. It's
that the rabies virus when an animal is affected, makes it extremely painful to
swallow. Really, they're afraid to like drink and swallow. Wow. Yeah,
do you want to know why? Yes? I do. Okay,
So I'll start this with a question. Do you know how rabies is spread
from animal to animal? I don't. I'm gonna guess through saliva. Yeah,
yeah, I should know more concidering how long we've been talking. Yeah,
Or it's if you have like an open wound and you touch an infected
animal and somehow, like part of its bodily fluids get into you through your
wound. So that's why I also don't handle animals. Without gloves on,
because that'll typically be an exposure. I once had to tell a man who
buried a baby fox with his bare hands that he had to go get shots,
so nice. Yeah, it was a terrible day, and then I
couldn't test for rabies as a whole thing. But anyways, it's so interesting.
The rabies virus collects in your salivary glands in your mouth, like that's
where they multiply the most. Really, so this virus makes it hard to
swallow, because if you swallowed a lot, you would dilute the virus from
your mouth. How the hell does a virus do this to like not just
one animal, but like to all of them, all the mammals, Like,
how the hell does it do that? It's horrifying. But isn't it
like objectively cool that a virus figure that out? Yeah, it's extremely cool.
Yeah, and horrifying viruses will be the downfall of us. But yeah,
so that's kind of how that works. And like I said before,
it kind of centralizes in the brain, so it truly is like a psychological
virus, like it affects their brain chemistry. Whereas I think a lot of
people when they see an animal with mange sometimes get confused and think it also
has rabies, which it could, but mange doesn't affect their brain necessarily.
Are you familiar with mange? I just know it's a kind of a skin
condition or a parasite, I think, yeah, So it's almost like having
fleas. It's a mite, and the most common mange is sarcoptic mange,
So that's the little mite that gets on you whatever. Essentially, the mites
get on an animal, they reproduce, reproduce, reproduce, and unlike,
which are just really itchy. And yeah, if you have a lot of
fleas, it can do a lot of damage. But mites, it makes
all the hair fall off and it gets their skin all crusty and gross.
So I've had to deal with mange quite a bit too, just at the
work locations of them at sometimes and it eventually starts to crust over their eyes
if it gets really bad. Yeah, So either the poor animal dies of
exposure because all their furs gone, so they can't, you know, stay
warm. Yeah, exactly, they can't regulate the same way they used to.
If it starts to cover their eyes, they also can't hunt. And
then also they're so itchy all the time. They spend so much time scratching
themselves. They're also not sleeping as much. Yep, they really can't hunt
as much. So I had this really unfortunate thing where, if you saw
me on Twitter a few months ago, I was posting about this young fox
I was trying to catch because it was alone. But then I did spot
an adult, but she had mange pretty bad, and there were three other
fox kids. I was only able to trap one and bring it to a
rehabber, but all the other kids died because the mother had mange so bad
that she literally just couldn't take care of them. Yeah, so that's pretty
bad. But that doesn't affect their brains so much as it makes them really
desperate. So sometimes they'll approach people just because they're literally dying and need food
and water and whatever. So that's really unfortunate. But oh boy, do
I have a fun story about mange and coyotes. So another story from Dan
Flores's Coyote America book. I'm going to read a quote from James Galen,
who used to be Glacier National Park superintendent. In nineteen thirteen. This guy
got super excited about killing off predators with biological warfare. So James Galen wrote
to the State Veterinarian and said, and I quote, I am desirous of
inoculating with Mange some coyotes to turn loose here in the park, with the
idea that I may eventually kill off all the coyotes in the park in this
manner. I don't understand why. So Montana was like hell yeah, brother,
and gave them two Mange coyotes and let them loose, And then eventually
Congress was like, nah, what if we just use poison. Oh that's
great. So that's how that all happened. From the last episode, I
still want to know why, like what this guy was doing that was so
bad to this national park where they were like I got rid of all of
them. That's the night we just hated predators. Something I just don't understand.
And people go to Yellstone, who see the predators that's a whole purpose
of it. Yeah, now they do. Yeah, I guess we're not
not as affected by them as much anymore. But still it's just it's had
wild to me. Well, part of the reason that is that we're not
so against them anymore is there's this man named Aldo Leopold. He's a very
famous ecologist. He wrote the Sand County Almanac, which is a really famous
book if you're into nature and environmentalism and whatnot. He was the first person
who realized that killing predators wasn't a great thing. No, or maybe even
if he wasn't the first person who realized it, he was the first person
who vocalized about it to like the American populace and wrote about it, because
he was like, huh, you know, there's all these predators here,
and we came over here and murdered all of them because we thought they would
kill off all the things we wanted to hunt. But I guess they all
lived here for hundreds of years before that and didn't kill off all the elk
and weird hear, and it's like, wow, crazy, right, It's
almost like we have no idea what we're doing, and we still don't.
Yeah, of course not. We were all clueless. Do you know what
year he started, you know, voicing his opinions on that nineteen twenties,
So that wasn't that long ago. That was only one hundred years ago.
Yeah, isn't that scary a little bit? What are some signs of an
animal being rabid, like, other than approaching people, Like, are there
things that you should look out for, like I said before, you know,
stumbling, drunk like behavior, those are things. But once again,
that can be a little tricky too, because if you see an animal who
was just hit by a car, then they're stumbling. They might just have
a broken leg, yeah, or concussion or something. Yeah, So that's
when it can get a little confusing. Seeing animals during the day not a
sign of having rabies. A lot of animals come out during the day to
hang out, Like even owls come out during the day and they can't get
rabies because they're not mammals, so like they just kind of do what they
want. You know. People see bears out during the day and get nervous
sometimes too, But these animals are way smarter than we give them credit for.
And if there's a food source that's only available during the day, like
your bird feeder, if you take it in at nighttime, they'll just come
out during the day. Yep. So that's kind of a big one.
You know, just because it's out during the day doesn't mean they're rabid.
However, usually if you see a bat out during the day, that's not
a great sign. Okay, that's when you should avoid. Yes, especially
if the bat is on the ground. Don't touch it, okay, just
like put something over it, take it somewhere to somebody. Not great.
Hey, Ashley, can you chop off this bat's brain for me? Oh
god, I've never done a bat. That's actually surprising. Yeah, I've
done mostly like raccoons, bobcats, foxes, skunks. So cool. What
animals can and can't get it? I know you called it raccoon rabies,
but is that like the only raccoons can get That was just what they call
the type for all those small mammals. Yeah, well that's where it's confusing.
So it's called raccoon rabies, but any mammal can get it, like
literally anyone, any mammal. So I can go throw a rabbid raccoon at
a whale and the whale will get rabies. Is that how it works?
Oh my god, Me and my coworkers have talked about that so much in
theory. Yes, you could give like a seal rabies. That's so interesting
and I don't want it to happen. No me either, I see you
winking at me. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
no, not me, No, that would be That would be crazy.
Though. Can you imagine finding like a rabbit dolphin like just like swimming out
and make the Florida keys and you're like, oh, cute a dolphin and
it starts like attacking you. Yeah. I can't do a dolphin dolls.
So that again again, Oh boy, do you know what sounded dolphin mix?
Do? I just can't make it? Oh God, So what's worse?
So what's worse? So stupid? So raccoon rabies is just I think
that's just the first animal they discovered it in and that's what they call it.
Okay, but but this is exciting. There's vampire bat rabies, specifically
for vampire bats. I guess I should say, like vampire bats can get
rabies, Okay, And obviously that's horrifying because their whole mode of eating is
drinking blood, biting things. Yeah, so if vampire bats get into because
right now they're really encroaching on the United States, but they're not really here
yet. Well, they're just down in Mexico or yes, Okay, so
it'll be very scary if they get here because in the southern parts of the
US. Well, I mean, it's a huge problem all over the US,
but specifically in the South we have feral swine. Yeah, so massive
big old page that are aggressive, nasty. Yes, and vampire bats feed
on farrel swine if they can. Yeah, that'd be a good place to
go for it, and they group up, so it would be real gnarly
if they came up here and passed on rabies to feral swine. I also
know that there's mongoose rabies, a strain of that in Puerto Rico. That's
pretty gnarly right now too, So yeah, so there's different strains. Any
male can get it in theory. Yes, also the marine mammals. But
raccoon rabies is really just a thing on the East coast right now because some
jackwagon took a raccoon from Florida and hiked it up north up here and brought
rabies here. And that's another reason why we don't enjoy people relocating wildlife,
because you might be transferring rabies. He just like befriended a rabid raccoon,
and like, how do you hike with a raccoon without being a friend?
Oh? I met he like trapped a raccoon and like drove it or flow.
Oh okay, I thought you said hike. He hiked it up literally,
like up the appalation trail. I was like, no, that would
be wild. No, it was wild in the sense that he brought a
whole new strain of rabies to a place where it didn't exist before. Yeah,
that's a bit unfortunate for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, So that's why
we discourage people from relocating wildlife because a lot of people have no idea where
rabies is located and where it's not and what strains are are not. What
would a human with rabies kind of like be showing what signs would a person
have? Yeah, so similar symptoms, right, So foaming at the mouth
is a big one because, like we were talking about, the rabies really
collects in your salivary glands, so it causes you to excessively salivate. So
foaming at the mouth is a thing for animals, but also people will do
it, and also people will bite other people if they have rabies. It's
like a zombie virus. It is the closest thing we have to zombies.
Yes, that's pretty cool. It's horrifying, but it's objectively very cool.
Is objectively objectively of course, very cool. Yeah. Oh, but the
confusing thing about rabies too is that you can be bitten and it might take
a while for the symptoms to show up. So like, you could be
bitten and it can lay dormant in you, and like two years later you
could start foam at the mouth, and when you start presenting symptoms for rabies,
it's too late. So it's important if you get bitten to get the
shots right away because if those symptoms start to develop, you're already on.
If you get bit and you wait like a couple of weeks, is that
going to be too late? Is the virus already in you? Like?
Will the vaccine kill it? If it's already in you? I'm not like
a disease biologist, but the theory is like, if you are not presenting
symptoms yet, get your shot, if you were suspected of being bitten,
But if you're showing symptoms, the SHOT's not gonna do shit and you're gonna
die. Gotcha, plain and simple, one hundred percent of mortality, right,
I remember you're telling me this or ninety nine point nine ninety nine because
that one late, lad, Yeah, exactly, So you could have been
bitten by a bat that you picked up to put outside and two years later
kick the bucket. So if there's a bat in your house, how would
you suggest to remove it safely? You know what's ironic? I was looking
at my Snapchat memories and exactly one year ago I had a bat in my
house. Crazy And it's really funny because here I am a wildlife biologist who
used to do public presentations with a live bat, and I literally just put
a blanket over my head. Someone else deal with this. That sounds like
you. Yeah, it does. Open a door to any room that has
windows, get the bat in there, somehow shut the door, or okay,
before he shut the bat in the room, open all the windows in
that room. Make sure that there's no screens in the windows so the bat
can fly out. Shut the door, leave the bat inside there and it'll
fly out on its on. Okay, that's a pretty easy thing to do.
Yeah, it works really well. The only tricky thing is if the
bat's been in your house for a long time, it lives there now,
well, no, it starts to get weaker because they eat ten thousand insects
in one night. Yeah, so they eat a lot because they have a
quick tabolism. So if they're not eating and they're stuck in your house for
two days, they're probably gonna get really weak and be like on the floor.
So yeah, rabies, man, it's scary. Yeah. I also
have a raby shot for other reasons. Don't know why I had to get
it. So it's a rabbit. We're not the rabbit. But like all
the raccoons that were around your dumpster at the time, I'm sure health that
we had several raccoon interactions. I don't know if you'd label them as a
tax probably could, but they were interactions for sure. Did they bite you
not me? No? Oh that's good. Yeah I was. I was
too quick for him. I'm an athlete. Didn't one fight like a trash
bag that you were taking out? Yes? I did have to hit one
with a trash bag and run away after the bag was torn apart. Oh
my god, they were bad. They were really cool. Wow that sounds
snarly, but yeah, so you know, in my work with rabi's I
also, like you mentioned the last episode how you were like, oh,
who drops rabies vaccines from airplanes? That is the thing I've done. That
is the thing you've done. Yes, So there is efforts to vaccinate wildlife
from the eastern seaboard of the United States because we're trying to eliminate raccoon rabies,
So how can you get a vaccination through a pill? Like, why
don't we just do that for people? I've had a lot of people ask
me that. Like I had some really old man get really close to my
face and ask me that once and like spit all over my face as he
was chewing skittles. It was really unpleasant, but I'll never forget it.
And he was like, Wow, I can't I just take my dog's rabies
vaccine and get vaccinated. It's because we don't need it. Yeah, how
many of us never interact with rabies in our lifetime? Probably majority of us.
Yeah, yeah, hopefully no one has to interact with it exactly.
But if you're a wild life professional and you handle animals, then it makes
sense. It's called pre exposure prophylaxis. Those are the shots that you get
before you're exposed, just to keep you safe. And it's just like not
a necessary thing. Since we eliminate canine rabies, that's really the animal you'd
probably get it from the most yeap since you have to get the shot anyway
after you get a bit like you specifically, what does the vaccine do for
or does it extend the amount of time you have before the virus would become
lethal. Does it possibly just eliminate it completely, But you go get the
shots anyway. So your pre exposure shots are basically to buy you time if
you do get exposed, and give time for that animal to be tested by
the health department to see if you would have to get those additional shots,
because once again they're expensive, they can be painful, So just kind of
to buy you time. Because if I'm working and i have a dead animal
in front of me, and I'm wearing gloves, but I scratched through those
gloves and there's some remnants of blood, that's considered an exposure, so I'd
have to go get the extra shots after if the animal was to test positive.
So the gentleman who was at the beginning this episode who was attacked with
his family, I'm assuming he was okay. Yeah, all the injuries are
probably relatively minor compared to other things we talked about. Oh yeah, especially
compared to the last episode. The guy who like got what looked like knife
slashes all over his face. Yeah, so ian O'Reilly was fine. I
don't even know if his two year old son needed the vaccines because he technically
wasn't bitten. It was just his jacket. But yes, so the father
did get the shots and he's perfectly fine. Yea. And if you're out
on a hike and you think you may be being approached by a rabit animal,
what would you suggest we do? Yeah, great question. See,
the hard thing with rabies is that they're not acting normally. Yeah, you
can't really scare it off the way you would. Yeah, it's you know,
if an animal's approaching you and it has rabies, clearly doesn't have a
fear of people. So I would suggest to try to back away as much
as you can. If you can get like a big stick to try to
poke it away from you, that'd be great. But yeah, that's a
hard one because they're not in a right state of mind. So if you
could call somebody, that would be great. It depends on the ant,
Like if it's a if it's a rabid skunk, then you could easily run
away from a skunk or a raccoon, But if it's a coyote or something,
it's a little harder. Oh. Also another thing, just as a
caveat, so skunks. A lot of people assume skunks are also a rabid
because skunks will sometimes approach people. Skunks are just chill. There's so many
cases of people petting skunks because they thought it was their cat. Because skunks,
no, you're not going to try to eat them. The only thing
that really eats skunks regularly are great horn owls because they don't have a good
sense of smell, so they can't smell have terrible skunk smell. Yeah.
Also they're badasses. They don't care. Ye deliat anything. Do your best
to just avoid an animal you suspect to be rabbit. Any interaction you we
have with wild animal, probably talk to someone and see if you should get
a RABI shot. Yes, if you physically interact with any animal that is
acting funky to you in some way, definitely talk to your healthcare provider.
I am not a doctor, talk to them. If you suspect an animal
has rabies, call your local Honestly, if it's really acting sick, I
would call your local PD, just because I know state wildlife agencies like it's
harder to get a hold of them and get a good response time, so
your local PD will be more helpful. And they're the ones who can discharge
a firearm, so they can help you out. Yeah if it needs to
be put down, Yeah, if it's really bad. So do you remember
a few months ago the rabbit bobcat that attacked that woman in their driveway?
Oh yeah, there was a video of it, right, yes, So
this woman. For those of you who didn't see it, or for those
of you who did, here's a recap. The woman and her husband are
walking out their house. She's carrying a carrier which I think had a cat
in it, honestly, and you just hear this whow and no woman scoops,
Oh my god, and this bobcat just climbs up her leg and is
attacking her. So the husband drops his tray of brownies, runs over to
the other side of the car, and then comes around holding a bobcat above
his head and chucks that thing like he's throwing in a soccer ball into a
game, like it is wild. And there were so many people I saw
on Twitter who were like, Oh, he really didn't have to throw it
like that, And I'm like, bitch joking have you never been around a
cat? My cat, she's like seven pounds. They're so gnarly. Bobcats.
Yeah, she's really messed me up sometimes. So like a bobcat,
which is upwards of twenty pounds, and also one that has rabies, so
it's constantly coming after you. Absolutely not. So that guy ended up shooting
the animal, which was the right way to go because it did have rabies.
Yep. I feel bad because there's not a lot of great information besides
stay up to date on rabid animal cases or suspected animal rabbit animal cases in
your town if you can so. I again, I think the best thing
we can do is if we have a physical interaction with an animal, we
should go get the vaccine. Go get vaccine, to talk to a doctor,
doesn't matter, YEA. Even if you aren't sure for it's act and
weird, it's still better to be safe because, like you said, it
is one hundred percent fatality rate, and there are reports that come out every
year for rabid animal cases in your state. So buy your state health department
typically, so if you can get the information, get it, just see
if it's around you. Because in New Hampshire, for example, we have
rabies in southern New Hampshire but not northern New Hampshire. So my whole job
is, Yeah, that's why I go and look for road kill up north,
because I'm looking for rabies cases. You don't care about finding them down
south because you know it's there, so you're trying to make sure it's not
spreading exactly. So you know, when I heard about the coyote case in
Kensington, that's not a surprise because we knew rabies was there. Yep.
So cool. Well, I think that about wraps this episode up. I
just I kind of just wanted to cover rabies because I think it's super interesting.
I think it's a very important thing to cover too with a podcast like
this. Yeah, and I could probably talk about rabies for a long long
time, but in the interest of keeping our episodes within a certain timeframe,
I say we cut it short. But if you ever have any questions,
once again, check out that podcast. This podcast will kill you. They
have a fantastic rabies episode. If you have any questions about rabies and wildlife,
feel free to reach out. I'm happy to chat about it. You
can reach us at get Out a Live podcast at gmail dot com. You
can find us on Instagram at get Out a Live Pod. You can find
me on Twitter at the Angry Ologist. You can reach me through Ashley's social
media. She will be my assistant. Find us on Facebook get Out a
Live Podcast. Nick will respond to your things there, right, Nick,
I mean what everyone's asking QUESTIONNS like. Also, apparently I need to get
clearance to make sure that our responses are appropriate. Yeah, we went over
this. You can't say an animal has a big but DOC to a random
person, but she did. That's okay, we can keep it to ourselves
next time. Fine. Anyways, thank you so much for joining us.
This was our first two parter. The first step was quite different from this
app to try to make it a little less controversial and possibly try to make
it more disease focused, because I think I'm sure there'll be cases that come
in the future of animals that have Rabi's and we can chat more about specific
things then. But if anything comes up that we haven't touched on in this
episode, Yeah, this is a actively flowing and in production podcast, So
things pop up tomorrow, we'll probably talk about it next week. Yeah.
And also we got our first sticker samples yesterday. Today they look so good.
Our patreon members have already seen them and given us advice and feedback,
which has been great. You can become a patron of ours on dot com
slash get Out a Live Podcast. There's also a button on our website get
Out a Live Podcast dot com where you can join our patreon. But and
that's where you get to you know, get different benefits for different tiers,
so you can vote on episodes, see these stickers, get discounts on all
of our merch that's going to come out, So check it out. We
would appreciate it. And also I have a lot of ideas for bonus episodes
that I would really love to do, Like we could do more episodes like
this and make them bonus episodes. So I joined our patreon. We'll do
more of those. They might look a little different from the episodes we do
on our main feed. It might be more like, you know, wildlife
attacks in the news this week, or debating which animals are most deadly,
which ones we could take in a fight. Yeah, because uh, that's
what the world needs is more white guys talking about what they could fight.
There's probably not many, to be fair. Thank you so much for joining
us for this weird little episode seven of get o A Live We love you
and we will see you next Wednesday for a new animal attack story.