[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by Shadywood

Source? The CDC: CDC - Rabies in the U.S. - Rabies

"From 1960 to 2018, 127 human rabies cases were reported in the United States, with roughly a quarter resulting from dog bites received during international travel. Of the infections acquired in the United States, 70% were attributed to bat exposures."

Rabies from any source is rare. But not as rare as you might think, because its symptoms are so often misdiagnosed. There was a case a few years ago of a guy who got rabies from a donated kidney. The donor had died in a car wreck.

We had a sick racoon at our place in Texas once, wandering around between my house and the neighbor's. I called animal control. My neighbor decided to take care of it himself. He brained the poor creature with a shovel and buried him in the cornfield across the road.

A few months later my neighbor mysteriously disappeared. He was found a couple of days later, 500 miles from home, dead at the wheel of his truck, where he'd run off some little country road in the middle of the night and hit a tree. He'd told his wife he was going out to buy a boat (after they'd already gone to bed).

Are the two incidents related? Who knows. He seemed like a normal guy until he suddenly decided to drive to Dallas in the middle of the night to run into a tree. I don't think he was an organ donor, thankfully.

As far as mosquitoes go, fogging works a heck of a lot better than a bat house in your back yard. But to each their own, I guess.

And my CDC source is here. Apparently, a lot has changed between 1960 and 2009.