The Crazy Foxes

In rural eastern Pennsylvania last week, parents were convoying their children to school buses, and people who had business in the fields were carrying clubs or guns. Cause of the scare: an epizootic of rabies among Pennsylvania's foxes.

In Dallas (pop. 1,685), a woman died after being bitten by a rabid fox. All over a 19-county area, sick and crazy foxes have been seen charging out oi the woods, snapping wildly. In Whitemarsh township, a woman beat one off with a handbag. Near Devon, a boy blew a hawk-call and was charged by three of the beasts. Within the city limits of Philadelphia itself, a rabid fox was killed after it attacked three people.

Wildlife authorities know what to do and are doing it. Rabies, a common disease of wild animals, is believed to affect all warm-blooded mammals; it has been found among rabbits, moles, raccoons, mongooses, beavers and many others. Skunks and the dog tribe, including foxes and coyotes, are especially susceptible. The most unpleasant victim is the vampire bat of South and Central America (TIME, June 25), which gives the disease to the people whose blood it taps.

Experts believe that epizootics of rabies are largely a result of over-population among certain animals. When foxes, for instance, get too thick, those that have got the disease from an outside source can find many others to bite and infect before they die. When the population thins out, rabies becomes rare because its victims die in solitude without spreading the disease.

The obvious remedy for Pennsylvania's epizootic is to thin out the foxes, estimated to number 95,000 in the 19 counties. Aided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state's wildlife authorities have mobilized more than 100 skilled game wardens armed with traps and poison. Their aim is to clear foxes from "control corridors" twelve to 16 miles wide around the infected area. Favorite bait is crow carcasses laced with strychnine and buried in "dirt holes" where foxes cache surplus food. Most wild animals dislike crow, but foxes have nothing against it. Each poisoned bait will be carefully mapped, and signs to warn humans will be posted around it. Foxes are admittedly wily, but they cannot read. Furthermore, say the professional hunters, foxes lose their cunning when they get rabies, and fail to see through man's trickery.

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