LINCOLN, Maine — The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention informed town officials last week that a bat captured in Lincoln tested positive for rabies, and it wants any bats found in houses preserved for testing, Town Manager Lisa Goodwin said.
If a bat is rabid, and people let it free, there is a potential for it to spread the disease, Goodwin said Wednesday.
Center officials warned residents to take their pets to a veterinarian if strange wounds are found on them. People should avoid encounters with wild animals and report encounters with animals behaving strangely, Goodwin said.
Workers at Timberland Animal Hospital of Orono and Chester Animal Hospital of Chester said they had not seen any cases of rabies recently. The Katahdin Animal Clinic of Medway was closed Wednesday and its workers could not be reached for comment.
Rabies cases in Maine are not unusual but are fairly rare. The state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Stephen Sears, said in late August that fewer than 50 had been reported statewide in 2010, which is “not that high” and not above normal.
The three documented cases in Aroostook County this year — a skunk and two raccoons found in Sherman Mills — bring the total to eight for The County in the past three years, he said.
From January to August, 46 cases of rabies were documented statewide, with 10 in Cumberland, eight in Kennebec and six in Androscoggin counties. No other county had more than three reported cases, and five counties — Franklin, Waldo, Washington, Piscataquis and Sagadahoc — did not have any.
In August, a Brunswick man said he was attacked by a raccoon that climbed the stairs to get at him, biting his leg and hand. He told a local newspaper that he was receiving shots because the animal tested positive for rabies.
The Maine CDC did not provide details of the Lincoln case, Goodwin said. Center officials did not immediately return messages seeking comment Wednesday.
If you have a bat in your attic, the center wants you to kill it, put it in a box, put the box in your refrigerator and call 800-821-5821.
With bats usually becoming active in October and November, Goodwin said she understood the reasoning behind the need to capture and contain them, but admitted to some distaste at the thought of killing one of the flying rodents and sticking it in a refrigerator.
On the Web: http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/boh/ddc/epi/zoonotic/rabies/index.shtml.