The Perils of the Wild, Coming Closer to Home
New Subdivisions At Increased Risk

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007

She saw the footprints in the snow outside her home in the Fox Run subdivision in Waldorf, but Jackie Reid-Johnson never considered them signs of danger. So she sent her 11-year-old son, Dijon, outside to fetch the mail.

Lurking behind the bushes was a rabid fox -- a living example of a growing problem with rabies in the Washington area.

The fox attacked Dijon, gripping his pants leg with his teeth. "He sounded like an engine. It was just growling," Dijon said. "I was like really scared."

Dijon's older brother, K'iary, shook the fox off Dijon, and the screaming kids ran back inside, but the aggressive animal pursued. The mangy orange fox chased them through the living room and kitchen and then ran upstairs after their mother and younger sister.

K'iary eventually tricked the fox into entering his bedroom and slammed the door to contain the creature until authorities arrived. Sheriff's deputies killed the fox in Reid-Johnson's driveway.

Dijon, the only member of his family bitten by the animal, was treated immediately with a series of rabies vaccinations and survived the attack.

Animals carrying rabies are increasingly coming into contact with humans in communities across the region, according to data collected by health departments in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

In Charles County, where the rabid fox attacked at Fox Run in early February, the number of animals found to have rabies jumped from 10 in 2005 to 25 last year, the sharpest increase in the region. In Montgomery, Loudoun and Prince William counties, the number increased by more than 50 percent during the same period. That figure increased more modestly in the District and in Fairfax, Frederick, Howard and St. Mary's counties.

These figures do not necessarily indicate an overall rise in the number of animals carrying rabies. Rather, experts say, they show that such animals are coming into contact with humans more frequently.

Health officials attribute this trend to development patterns. As the metropolitan area continues its outward expansion, subdivisions are being built on previously forested or rural land, bringing humans closer to wild animals.

Rabies is a potentially fatal disease, so the recent increase worries animal control and public health officials. The viral disease is transmitted through the bite of an animal already carrying it.

"The challenge is to continue to get the message out to people to avoid any animal they are not familiar with," said David Goodfriend, director of Loudoun County's health department.

Rabies tends to be more prevalent in the warmer summer months. "Encounters between man and animal are more likely to happen because people walk in the woods or have picnics in the back yard," said Chinnadurai Devadason, Charles County's top health official.

The St. Mary's Health Department warned residents this month that "with mild weather just around the corner," people should be aware of the threat of rabies.

The disease is carried mostly by wild animals, including raccoons, skunks, foxes and bats. Rabies makes animals more aggressive than usual, which increases the risk that they could attack humans or domestic animals, such as dogs and cats.

Anyone exposed to a rabid animal should wash the affected area with soap and water immediately and then call the doctor or go to the nearest emergency room to be treated.

"I think people have this Old Yeller perception of rabies being something from way back when," said Leslie Payne, health information officer for St. Mary's. "People really do need to pay attention to it. It's a very deadly disease."

Health officials caution that statistics on the number of animals found to have rabies can be inconsistent. Wild animals can be tested for rabies only if they come into contact with humans; either they attack or are found dead. Therefore, the numbers can vacillate.

"We typically see both peaks and troughs in rabies over time," said Charles Rupprecht, chief of the national rabies program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He said the mid-Atlantic region has been a "hotbed" for rabies since the mid-1970s, when raccoons carried the disease to the area.

Anne Arundel County appears to be bucking the trend. The number of animals found to have rabies there decreased from 26 to 18 from 2005 to 2006, according to state statistics. The county has a particularly aggressive rabies vaccination program, annually dropping fishmeal baits from aircraft with vaccine for raccoons.

"It's been very successful," said Kyle Shannon, the county's oral rabies vaccination coordinator. "We've reduced rabies to about 60 percent" since beginning the aerial drops nine years ago.

But throughout the Washington area, housing is sprouting in places that had been habitats for wild animals.

"We're invading that habitat, and we get all concerned when things change and stuff happens, but that's called living in America," Rupprecht said. He said recent growth has carved "edge habitats" out of forests, and foxes, skunks and raccoons thrive in that environment.

"If you think of a solid belt of forest, when we start suburbanizing, we're breaking up the forest into a mosaic and you're getting edges," he said.

What's more, many homes are being built on cul-de-sacs, and those homes often back into wooded areas.

"You like a thick woods in the back of your house," Devadason said. "You get all the privacy and the beautiful scenery and the fall colors. I think that's the preferred way to live.

"But clearly, you're coming closer to the animals in the woods."

Reid-Johnson's two-story home is on a cul-de-sac with open woods behind it. "Since they named this place Fox Run, I'm sure there are all kinds of foxes back in there," she said.

She moved into the subdivision two years ago from Capitol Heights, a more urban community. When she moved, Reid-Johnson said, she never considered the possibility that her family would be attacked by a wild animal.

But now, she said she is worried about another attack.

"This is a nice neighborhood and there are kids that play everywhere," Reid-Johnson said. "I was so scared for them. I couldn't imagine them being sized up by a fox or a raccoon."