Rabid fox attacks 4-year-old

By Cynthia Pegram

Published: July 9, 2008

An Appomattox family has lived through a nightmare — a fox attacked their 4-year-old daughter while she played with other children at a Fourth of July gathering.

Tests results this week confirmed the fox was rabid.

Lydia Swan, daughter of Don and Stacie Swan, is undergoing what will be a weekly series of anti-rabies vaccine shots for about two months.

The vaccine “is highly effective,” said Steve Simpson, environmental health manager for the Central Virginia Health District.

To celebrate Independence Day, the Swans were visiting with friends and family in Amherst County.

“We were on a driveway, watching the fireworks and having a good time with family,” Don Swan said Wednesday.

It was about 9 p.m., and seven children under age 12 and eight adults were

present.

Swan’s daughter was about 10 feet from the house when a fox jumped at her, knocked her down, and bit her several times.

Shocked by the attack and startled by the screaming, the adults at first didn’t know what was happening. But then some saw the fox go beneath a Jeep Grand Cherokee in the carport.

One of the men got what Swan recalled was a .22-caliber gun and shot the fox several times, but it continued to move.

“I grabbed the gun and shot it in the head,” he said.

They called the Amherst County Sheriff’s Department, and animal control notified the health department.

The carcass was put on ice so that the neurological tissue could be evaluated by the Virginia Department of Health at the state lab in Richmond.

The family feared the dead fox was rabid. They cleaned Lydia’s cuts with peroxide and headed to Lynchburg General Hospital.

Although frightened and in pain, the little girl held up well. “She’s pretty tough,” her dad said.

At the Emergency Department, she was seen immediately and the rabies vaccine started, just in case.

Confirmation that the fox was rabid came Tuesday. “We kind of knew it, the way the animal acted,” Swan said.

Simpson, of the Health Department, said no other rabid foxes have been found in the district this year, and there have been no other reports of attacks by foxes.

“It’s fairly unusual for a rabid animal to directly attack a human,” he said.

Rabies is established in Virginia, Simpson said, and over the past several years, raccoons, skunks and foxes — in that order — are the species with the most confirmed cases.

This year, rabies has been confirmed in 171 raccoons, 73 skunks, and 46 foxes statewide.

Simpson said the Swans did everything right when the child was bitten.

Swan said since the incident, his daughter and her 6-year-old sister, Leah — who saw the fox attack her sister — have been a little skittish “and want to cut on every light in the house,” but are doing well.