Tavis' Raccoon

When there is a story to be told in the Brown household, it usually starts with "Did you hear about Tavis and..."

Tonight we were at Mollee's soccer scrimmage at school and Tavis found a trap in the school woods.  Apparently, the school had set traps to catch stray dogs and they had caught a raccoon instead.  Tavis felt like he was going to set the poor raccoon free, but when he grabbed the cage/trap the raccoon bit him.

So...we had to get school authorities to call the owners of the trap, remove the raccoon and have the raccoon escorted to the proper facilities to be tested for rabies.

We discussed the incident with our pediatrician and he said we were fine to avoid the ER and high rabies shot expense until we knew for sure if the raccoon had rabies or not.  The trap owners along with state health officials did not approve of our decision to wait and they called hourly trying to convince me to take my son to the ER.  By the third or fourth call they were telling me stories of children dying from rabies.  I calmly reminded them that I was just waiting on their test results and everything would be decided on my part.  I do not think they appreciated my retort.

By 3:00, the next day, we got the the report of no rabies!  We were thankful we did not spend the money on an ER visit or the shots.

Ironically, Tavis was trying to set the raccoon free.  The only way you can test for rabies is by decapitating it and testing brain cells.