Day 11

6-7-10

Today has been very interesting. Dr. Dan is allowing a camera crew to visit the clinic today to film a documentary on exotic animal veterinarians. They plan to call it Exotic Pet Vet, and then pitch it to the Discovery Channel. Who knows if it will ever actually air, but it was interesting to think about.

Along with our normal appointments, check-ups, vaccinations, tooth trims, etc., we had another exciting wildlife case. Some people found a baby fox on the side of the road that looked like it had been hit by a car.

There are multiple problems with this situation, all of which began swimming through my head as soon as they walked in the door. First of all, the patient is a wild fox, and the etiology of his illness is entirely unknown. In North Carolina, there are four types of animals that private practices are not allowed to treat due to the high risk of them being carriers of rabies: foxes, raccoons, bats, and skunks. (In Oklahoma, we also include coyotes in this list, but NC has very few coyotes.) This fox presented with hind limb paralysis and excessive drooling… HELLO!!! Prime rabies suspect from the first glance! Yes, this fox is incredibly young (around 3 to 4 weeks – which is very close to the minimal incubation time for rabies to be showing clinical signs… so she would have had to be infected immediately after birth, which is highly unlikely, in order to pose a risk to us). She is not aggressive, and is technically fairly unlikely of having rabies, but Dr. Dan’s son has not been vaccinated against rabies. Therefore, even minimal risk is more than I would like to expose him to. Dr. Dan however, didn’t think it was a major risk, and told me to take over the case and treat the fox. I put on gloves, (which must be done at the very least… and I should’ve had a mask on as well) I cleaned the fox, and gave her a full physical exam. She had a spinal abnormality in the lumbar region, which would explain the hind leg paralysis, and many broken teeth, which would explain the drooling, so once again, it’s not likely that these are signs of rabies. She also had an open fracture of the tibia bone that was full of maggots.

I cleaned her wounds, applied SSD, bandaged her leg for the evening, and administered pain medication and antibiotics. Dr. Dan is still trying to decide how he wants to treat the paralysis and the broken tibia, so I gave the fox some softened kibble and placed her in an incubator for the night.