Friday morning feel good stories
Our first story this morning comes from Texas, like many of our stories about good guys with guns;
McCaffrey said a family was asleep when two men kicked in the front door and started shooting. A resident on the couch woke up, grabbed his handgun and fired back. In all, he fired about 10 shots toward the intruders.
The suspects backed away, climbed into a getaway car driven by a third suspect. The resident ran after them and the shootout continued as the suspects sped off.
No injuries were reported.
Next up is Massachusetts, believe it or not, where a family was attacked by a real rabid animal;
The fox then attacked and bit Nick Stanley, 18, as he was working outside in a shed in his Hill Street yard Sunday.
“At that point my wife saw it and ran over and was yelling and it started to go off but then it turned and attacked her, and chased her. She was kind of running backwards kicking and finally fell over and was laying down kicking it,” said Nick’s father, Dana Stanley.
The fox backed off again and Nick Stanley’s mother and two siblings ran to the house.
“They said it bit my son. If a rabid animal bites somebody, you need to present the carcass to the state so they can inspect it to determine if it has rabies or not,” Dana Stanley said.
Fearing for his family, Dana Stanley got his legally-owned gun.
“I had come to the edge of the deck to try and see where it was and it had started running up after me. My kids were behind me — between me and the door — so I had one choice and I put it down right on the back deck of the house,” he said.
Local police and the animal control officer came to the house and retrieved the carcass. In less than 24 hours, the state lab determined the fox was rabid.
Category: Feel Good Stories
Well, for the Texas story, I guess if I was RUDELY awakened out of a sound sleep, I would probably miss 10 shots.
But the thing I’m taking from this story, is that the Bad Guys entered shooting, no waiting. This is escalation. And it’s not a good thing.
I’m reminded of the social background of the Heinlein book, “Friday”.
RE the second story: Shades of “Cujo”!
My prayers go out to those in the family bitten by the fox. Unless the medical procedures for rabies have advanced, the family is in for a long painful ordeal.
But the sad thing here is that the story includes, “he got his legally-owned gun”. Ponder on that for a moment. Sad. So sad. Yes, it’s Mass-hole-chusetts. But it’s still sad.
Agricultural science major/farmgirl to the rescue – answering the questions nobody else really cares about!
The treatment has advanced a great deal, and no longer has to go through the stomach to be administered. Since they appear to have caught this case well before any symptoms showed up for the kid who was bitten, there’s a better than average chance he’ll be fine (although there is, sadly, still a non-zero chance of the vaccine being insufficient). He will probably have regular checkups for the next two years, and if he gets a fever at any point they will probably be a little extra tense (early symptoms of rabies are quite similar to flu/fever).
The odds, though, are still in his favor, because of getting the treatment; which will take a few weeks but not require needles of UNUSUAL length or thickness.
ONly one person has lived through the Rabies treatment plan.
I don’t know the circumstances but I do remember reading about a little girl that survived being bitten by a rabid animal and surviving the treatment. The shots go through the abdomen and are really nasty and painful.
This cannot be a good thing.
Prayers for them.
Once again, agricultural science student/farmgirl to the rescue – bringing you the news NOBODY cares about! 😉 The girl you’re probably thinking of was already falling victim to symptoms. Prior to the development of symptoms, the standard rabies treatment is administered as a series of shots in the arm – one every week or so for a number of weeks (I forget how many shots in the series, I’m sorry!). This has a high rate of success. The case you might be thinking of was a case where the girl in question had run away a number of times and while she was on the run, was sleeping rough in caves and is believed to have been bitten by a rabid bat (fun fact: bats are one of the largest, if not THE largest, vector for rabies in the US). When she got back home, she didn’t tell anyone (she may not have known) and it was a number of weeks or months before she developed symptoms. Because they didn’t know she’d been bitten, it progressed for a while (symptoms initially resemble flu or fever-laden virus) without receiving vaccination or other proper treatment. When they did finally find out the real deal and she tested positive for rabies, they came up with an experimental treatment which has been dubbed the Milwaukee Protocol. (I’m not making this up. The name is too cool for me to come up with!) This involved a drug cocktail and putting the girl in a medical coma and giving her immune system a chance, boosted by the drugs, to fight the virus. In her case, it worked, and was a nine days’ wonder in the medical world. However, a lot of the reports about it are a little misleading – maybe a little over-optimistic. We’ve only been tracking rabies cases with any certitude for a century, century and a half, and not with the thoroughness modern communication and testing allows. There is a possibility that some people are capable of and have managed to fight off rabies in the past, and that she is essentially one… Read more »
Rabies is very survivable if you get treatment before you start showing symptoms. Such as when you are bitten. If you wait till you are foaming at the mouth that is another story. Very tough to recover.
Speaking of foaming at the mouth, apparently certain commentators on MSNBC are immune to rabies. Some politicians also…