N.B. cites Maine as rabies tie Testing discrepancy skews disease data

ST. STEPHEN, New Brunswick – Annabelle Juneau loved to take her dogs for a run in the woods, but that fun ended when her three golden retrievers – Shelby and her offspring, Baby and Bandit – encountered a rabid raccoon. They ended up quarantined, and Juneau soon found herself at a Charlotte County hospital having to undergo a series of shots.

Juneau, a Canadian Customs inspector, lives just outside St. Stephen on the Todd’s Point Road that runs along the St. Croix River. Her home is in a wooded area where wildlife is abundant. Her awareness of the disease was raised last January when her dogs came across a young, dying raccoon.

“I looked out the window and I saw the dogs down on the beach, they were barking at a bunch of rocks. A raccoon scrambled out and basically was trying to get away from them,” said Juneau, who rescued the raccoon. “I don’t know if it had actually drowned or not.”

Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system. Once symptoms appear, the disease is always fatal in animals and humans. The animals that most often carry the disease include raccoons, foxes, skunks and bats. The virus is most commonly transmitted through saliva, primarily as a result of a bite but also when saliva comes in contact with an open cut or wound, according to a pamphlet issued by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

To date, there have been 45 positive cases of rabid animals reported in St. Stephen, a community of 4,000 located on the Maine-Canadian border. St. Stephen’s closest U.S. neighbor is Calais.

Canadian officials believe the strain of rabies that is turning up on their side of the St. Croix River, known as the Mid-Atlantic strain, is related to the rabies problem in Washington County, which had its first reported case last year. In Calais, four cases have been reported to date.

Dr. James Goltz, a pathologist with the provincial Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture, said more cases have been reported in the St. Stephen area compared to the Calais area because Maine’s testing is limited to animals that have had contact with people or domestic animals. In New Brunswick, he said, tests are performed not only on animals that have come in contact with people and domestic animals, but also on all animals that have shown abnormal behavior. In the Charlotte County area, he said, all animals found dead, including roadkill, are tested.

Goltz said the Mid-Atlantic rabies strain first was detected in Maine in 1994 and has spread north.

“There was a case in Calais that was detected in May and a second case in August,” he said. “We had our first one in September.”

Goltz admitted there has been concern that the problem would spread north, further into New Brunswick.

“Raccoons are very versatile and creative little characters and they can hop on the back of a truck, a train or boat and hitchhike,” he said. “You might have an animal, which is not really sick but is carrying the virus. … And once they do get sick, they may have already been transported someplace. Maybe that’s how it ended up in Calais in the first place.”

Julie Crosby, a microbiologist with the Maine Department of Human Services’ rabies lab, said the state cannot afford to test every dead animal. “If there is animal or human contact, we certainly will test it, and we recommend that people call the lab,” she said.

Crosby said pet owners need to act responsibly and have their animals vaccinated. She also suggested that people instruct their youngsters to leave wild animals alone.

Annabelle Juneau hopes her experience will help educate people about the dangers of rabies.

After rescuing the raccoon from her dogs, Juneau said she wrapped the creature in blankets and tried to revive it. “I took my hand and wiped his little face and massaged his little heart, trying to bring it around,” she said. She said she started to take the raccoon to the veterinarian but realized the animal was dead. So she took the animal into the woods.

A week later, she related the incident to a friend and her friend suggested she have the animal tested for rabies.

The next day, Juneau said, she called the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which retrieved the raccoon. The animal was tested and Juneau breathed a sigh of relief when she learned the result was negative.

But Juneau’s odyssey did not end there. In March, she returned home from work and let her dogs out. She said her routine is to change her clothes and then play with the dogs.

“That day, I had a splinter in my finger. I had tried to get the splinter out, so I had an open wound on my hand,” she said. “While I was coming down the stairs, the dogs ran up to greet me. I had a ball in my hand, and they were jumping and licking at my hand with the ball. When I stepped outside the front door, [I] threw the ball to the right. Then I looked to the left and there was a dead raccoon.”

She said the raccoon was not been there when she arrived home, so she believes one of the dogs must have found the animal in the woods and carried it home.

Juneau called the rabies hot line. The animal was retrieved, and within five days Juneau learned it had tested positive for rabies, and she was told to go the hospital. There she was given a series of five needles in the hip and one in the arm. That was followed by a series of four more shots over a 28-day period.

Juneau’s dogs, which had been vaccinated against rabies, were quarantined for 90 days.