Brandon’s animal control officers have shot two confirmed rabid skunks in recent weeks, and suspect there might be more roaming the city’s southwestern suburbs.
In early December, Brandon resident Barb Vinthers heard that a rabid skunk had been caught in her neighbourhood. On New Year’s eve, she looked out the window of her home and saw a big skunk chasing her neighbour’s seven horses around a field.
She immediately called her neighbour, who in turn called the Brandon Police Service’s animal control officers, who shot the skunk.
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“We’ve always had skunks out here. You live in the country, you have skunks, right?” she said, adding that this was her first encounter with a rabid one.
Although Vinthers doesn’t have any pets to be concerned about, she said she is more cautious at night for fear of coming across a deranged skunk.
Special constable Clint Cox said the main risk to humans comes via unvaccinated household pets that have come into contact with rabid animals. Most often transmitted through saliva, rabies can be spread to humans from a bite or even a lick from a pet. In skunks, symptoms may take up to six months to appear. That means skunks infected during the summer might not begin causing trouble until late winter. Since 1925, there have been 30 human fatalities reported in Canada.
The horses in the skunk-chasing incident are being kept in quarantine on the farm for 60 days, he added.
If a skunk behaving erratically wanders into someone’s yard, Cox said people should keep their distance and call police immediately.
The rabid skunk outbreak is the first reported in the area in at least 14 years, and he suspects that it might be related to a spike in the local raccoon population, another species that can carry rabies.
“We were just inundated by raccoons in the city this summer,” he said.
