A raccoon that attacked a resident in Mattapoisett on Friday, July 8, subsequently tested positive for rabies on Monday.
Animal Control Officer Kathy Massey, assisted by Kelly Massey, Fairhaven ACO, captured the raccoon after a long chase that started at the Mattapoisett Library where a large group of children was ushered inside for safety, and led the animal control officers through the village and finally up a tree on the corner of Beacon Street and Marion Road, but not before the creature attacked a resident out gardening in her yard.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a raccoon act like that,” said Kathy Massey during a Monday phone conversation.
How she described what happened on Friday was nothing less than Kafkaesque.
“We didn’t know where this thing went,” said Massey. “But it was acting sick…. Lethargic, dopey.”
And unless it is springtime and the raccoon is looking for food to feed its young, the raccoon wasn’t supposed to be out walking about in broad daylight.
“I said, there’s something wrong with this thing,” Massey said. It looked scraggly and sickly. “It was the eyes…” She said she knew the raccoon was rabid just by looking into its eyes that fluttered and shifted back and forth like.
Massey heard a woman scream from her yard and followed the sound to where she witnessed the raccoon attacking the woman and then running off. The woman was stunned and bleeding from her wounds.
“On her inner leg, she had the perfect mark of a raccoon print that clawed straight down her leg,” as Massey described it. The woman immediately began treatment for rabies. It was apparent that the animal was rabid, said Massey.
The chase resumed and led Massey to a tree not too far from the attack.
For the record, said Massey, regardless of reports that she “climbed” up the tree to capture the violent and diseased creature, there was no tree climbing.
“I went up a ladder and looked into the tree,” said Massey. “Please let people know I did not climb a tree.”
Once captured after what Massey said felt like an hours-long pursuit, the raccoon was euthanized and the head sent to a lab in Jamaica Plain and tested for rabies. The results were indeed positive.
“Sometimes you can tell just by looking at them,” said Massey. “I’ll just never forget they eyes. Squiggly, like she’s not even there….”
By Jean Perry