A fox that bit a Bowdoinham woman and entered two area homes on Tuesday before being killed has tested positive for rabies.
Sheriff’s deputies went to a home on Pond Road in Bowdoinham just after 9 p.m. Tuesday for a report that a fox had chased a resident’s dog and bit the resident as she tried to get her dogs into the house, Chief Deputy Brett Strout of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
Thirty minutes later, deputies and the town’s animal control officer were called to a home on Post Road in Bowdoin, where deputies believe the same fox had chased dogs around the yard and then followed them into the house. A resident then killed the fox with a shovel, Strout said.
On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the fox tested positive for rabies.
On Saturday in Lisbon, which is adjacent to Bowdoin, an unknown animal attacked a Lisbon family as they walked along the walking path near the Androscoggin River.
Police said the animal, likely a dog or a coyote, attacked an 11-year-old girl who suffered bite wounds to her leg, Lisbon Police Chief Marc Hagan said at the time. The girl’s mother was bitten on the hand as she attempted to pull her daughter away from the animal, and the father reportedly suffered minor wounds to his hand while prying the animal’s mouth off his wife’s hand.
The family’s 16-month-old St. Bernard, which was with them at the time, was not injured.
The family went to St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston for treatment of their injuries.
Police say there has been no sign of the animal.