Man strangles rabid coyote to death after it attacks his son

(CNN) A New Hampshire man killed a coyote with his bare hands Monday after it grabbed his 2-year-old son by his jacket hood and dragged him to the ground.

Ian O'Reilly told CNN he had "never harmed an animal so it was a weird experience." After the coyote bit him twice while he tried fending it off, O'Reilly kicked it away and used his body weight to suffocate it while holding its snout shut, he said in an emailed statement.

The coyote has since tested positive for rabies, the New Hampshire Fish and Game said Tuesday, and authorities believe more animals in the Exeter area could have the virus.

"Based on all the evidence we have collected and in talking with several people who recently reported seeing coyotes acting erratically, we don't believe this is the only coyote in the Exeter area that may have rabies," said Col. Kevin Jordan, chief of the Fish and Game law enforcement division.

Rabies is a virus that infects mammals. When an infected animal bites a human, rabies is transmitted from saliva through the open wound and into the nerves, where the virus goes to the brain and spinal cord. CDC experts recommend seeing a doctor for post-exposure treatment soon after contact with an infected animal, before the virus has the chance to turn fatal.

Mugwump66 on January 22nd, 2020 at 18:42 UTC »

My son wasn't bitten by a bat, one brushed up against him. He didn't tell me right away because it "didn't bite him." We went to the ER two weeks later. The doctor said it is not always a bite, it can be only saliva. And when a bat is in the house, they treat the whole family. The shots were in the arm, and my son said it was no big deal. So please please, with any exposure to a bat (possibly rabies), get yourself or kids treated.

EdgarSaltus on January 22nd, 2020 at 12:44 UTC »

EDIT TWO - I doubt many more people will see this, but since it got gold and sparked so much debate I'd like to clarify some things -

A) Other fatal deaths

Comparing rabies to an auto accident, CVD or cancer is not a fair comparison, in my opinion. One person claimed being hit by a bus is more common, and sure, but it's also a hell of a lot faster.

CVD is instant, or happens in spurts until the final heart attack. It isn't constant horror for you or your loved ones.

Cancer, I'll admit, is harder to downplay. Cancer fucking sucks. But it's harder to fathom, especially for family, that a wild animal attacked you and an invisible disease drove you to madness. Cancer is painful, degrading, and hard to watch in it's most aggressive forms, but you dont go mad, and you will never know the fear a rabid victim does, and that's a fact.

B) Frequency

People are bickering over the frequency, once again trying to ignore the pure horror of the virus. You aren't going to be crunching the numbers, having nuanced debates, when you are slipping from reality. Frankly this is like saying "most people aren't poor, so poverty isn't that bad".

C) It's preventable

As many have pointed out, rabies prevention is a phenomenon of the developed world. In most of the world, and for most of ancient history, rabies has only been outdone by fatalities spread by mosquitos. 100 years ago even America was MAJORLY afflicted by mosquito-borne viruses.

D) It's curable

Many others have pointed out that cure is a strong word for the Milwaukee protocol, that it is not recommended, and that you might just be better off dead. Some others have mentioned antibodies and vaccines, all contingent on awareness and adequate medical care, neither of which the "developing world" has in to meaningful degree.

In conclusion - you are right to be scared, probably because you have basic empathy for people you will never meet.

EDIT - For the morbidly curious, there is a full length audiobook on YouTube of Rabid: A cultural history of the world's most diabolical virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. It's very creepy and very good.

Oh shit, is it my turn to add the rabies copypasta? For those who haven't heard:

Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats.

Let me paint you a picture.

You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode.

Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed.

Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.)

You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something.

The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms.

It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache?

At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure.

(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done).

There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate.

Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead.

So what does that look like?

Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles.

Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala.

As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later.

You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts.

You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache.

You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family.

You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you.

Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours.

Then you die. Always, you die.

And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you.

Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over.

twistediniquity on January 22nd, 2020 at 12:41 UTC »

While the title is one of the most bad ass things I've read, it doesn't seem absurd or weird or funny in a way that would have it belong here.