Staff writer
Police had to find a raccoon Tuesday morning after it bit a Hillsboro man at Marion Reservoir.
Two Hillsboro officers and a sheriff’s deputy searched near the reservoir for the raccoon after dispatchers were notified by Hillsboro Community Hospital that an emergency room patient had been bitten.
Chief Jessey Hiebert, officer John Hubert, and deputy Steven Janzen found the dead raccoon in a wooded location the man had described, Hiebert said.
The unidentified bite victim had been at the reservoir with two dogs when one dog got into a fight with the raccoon. The man tried to remove the raccoon from the dog but was bitten.
He killed the raccoon, apparently with a crowbar, Hiebert said.
A Hillsboro veterinary clinic was asked whether the man’s dogs had been vaccinated against rabies. They had not been, so they are now quarantined, Hiebert said.
The dead raccoon was taken to testing.
Wild animals that bite someone are sent to Kansas State Rabies Laboratory in Manhattan. The laboratory coordinates with Kansas Department of Health and Environment on positive rabies tests.
The laboratory tests between 1,800 and 2,500 specimens a year using direct fluorescent antibody testing and determines the type or variant of rabies present.
According to the World Health Organization, the incubation period for rabies is typically two to three months but may vary from a week to a year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, humans bitten by an animal that might be rabid receive preventive treatments of a dose of human rabies immune globulin and rabies vaccine on the day of the rabies exposure, then additional doses of rabies vaccine on days 3, 7, and 14.