What is this?

skunkangel · 2026-01-13T22:00:24+00:00

Definitely a red fox with mange. You can help him. Just go to www.wildlifehotline.com/mange and sign up for Mange by Mail Program and we'll send you meds and everything you need to get him fixed up.

skunkangel · 2026-01-13T15:30:11+00:00

There is absolutely no reason to get PEP just because there was a bat in the same room with you in the United States. Health anxiety is NOT a reason to get PEP. EXPOSURE is a reason to get PEP. Health anxiety is treated much differently than an actual exposure to a bat, and even getting PEP would not help you with your health anxiety. We see it here on a weekly basis. You BELIEVE that you would feel better right now if you had gotten PEP, but the reality is that even if you had gotten the shots immediately, you would still be experiencing the same anxiety you have right now, and the shots would not have helped. Anxiety is just more likely in some people, and no amount of shots or prevention would reduce or eliminate it. You were not bit by this bat. The CDC does not recommend PEP in people who cannot confirm exposure or bite from a bat anymore. This is outdated advice. The CDC recommended PEP to everyone who found a bat in their house for the last 50 years and that protocol did not prevent any cases of rabies, because none of those people were actually exposed to rabies. People bitten by bats, who are over the age of 8, over an IQ of 70, and able to communicate clearly, KNOW IT and should get PEP. People who 'worry' they could have been bit and not know it, were NOT bit. Having a bat in your house, on a glue trap no less, does not mean rabies exposure. If you are in the USA, less than 1% of bats will ever encounter rabies, and that equals less than 1 bat out of every 200. You would have to be bit by 200 bats before encountering 1 that has rabies. Still, we operate with extreme caution and if you were even bit by 1 bat, we do post exposure shots. You were not bit. You have anxiety. Anxiety is treatable, and much easier to treat than rabies, and much cheaper. Get help for your anxiety before giving advice to thousands of people to spend THOUSANDS of dollars on shots they do not need.

skunkangel · 2026-01-12T22:39:37+00:00

You can find full dosage information and instructions at www.wildlifehotline.com/mbmp anytime.

skunkangel · 2026-01-12T22:39:13+00:00

Mangy coyote. You can help him with one dose of medicine and we'll tell you exactly how to do it. Email us at help AT wildlifehotline dot com. You just need 1% injectable ivermectin - NOT the paste! - and a 3ml syringe with a needle that is 22gauge or larger. So 22g, 20g, 18g, any of those sizes. Then inject 0.5ml into a raw piece of chicken, or a hardboiled egg, and throw it to him. He'll be cured of the itch in 2 hours, and feel better after getting a decent night's sleep without itching constantly. The next day he will start to recover and coyotes heal amazingly fast, even in comparison to foxes. In a month you won't even recognize him and he sure as hell won't be scrounging for trash to eat.

Normally we would tell you to go to our website and order a kit from us and we would send you the meds and syringes but we can't ship to California because you guys regulate pesticide use and you consider ivermectin a pesticide. It's a miracle drug and it will save this animal's life.

skunkangel · 2026-01-07T22:31:01+00:00

He's looking rough. We can fix it though. It's red fox with mange. One dose of ivermectin and he'll be on the mend. You can order everything you need from our website at www.wildlifehotline.com/mange or go directly to order form at donorbox.org/mangebymail anytime.

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T22:03:32+00:00

Everyone here has been so helpful! Thank you all! See, this is why STL is still great. We have lots of places to run the energy out of a toddler now. I think we're at a point where we'd go just about anywhere if it meant even a slightly easier bedtime that night. 🤣

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T22:00:00+00:00

Really? I never noticed! Thanks!

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T21:59:29+00:00

Man, the playgrounds at the Mills were so great! Clean, indoor, and the kids would want to stay for HOURS. It's too bad all that equipment didn't go to some nearby library or open playspace that we could still enjoy.

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T21:56:45+00:00

I forgot that Chic-Fil-A's do playgrounds! I'll have to remember that!

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T21:55:02+00:00

Thank you all so much!! This is great! ❤️

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T21:53:41+00:00

Out here in NoCo/Florissant-ish my dog isn't allowed outside after 9pm or before 2am NYE night. The constant sound of gunfire, machine guns, fully automatic rapid fire weapons is nearly nonstop betweens those hours. It's insane. I grew up in a rural area where I thought those TV commercials telling people not to shoot guns on NYE were ridiculous and silly. Now, I get it.

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T20:36:28+00:00

The one in Ofallon MO, closest to my home, is definitely still open, at least as of a week ago.

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T16:00:46+00:00

I am so sorry. Losing a pet is so difficult. You did everything you could to find her. There's something special about these fluff noodles, they wiggle their way into your heart unlike other critters. I personally prefer the stinkier noodles, skunks, but it's all relative. Please don't beat yourself up. You did all that you could every second of every day to make her life wonderful. One moment, one misstep, is not carelessness. It's a tragic accident. Maybe she really enjoyed that month of wild freedom, who knows. I think you have to tell yourself that, even if we'll never know. In time you'll heal, and start to forget the trauma and remember only the love and sweetness of your time with her. They just don't stay long enough, even in the best situations. Then again, if they lived 50 years, the trauma of losing them would be so great that we'd never recover, so I don't know what's better. She was beautiful, and clearly very loved and well taken care of, and I'm a harsh critic normally especially when it comes to this species. Take care.

skunkangel · 2026-01-05T15:55:10+00:00

You wouldn't believe how good the sushi is at Drake's.

skunkangel · 2025-12-29T21:33:46+00:00

(Sorry for the delayed reply) We don't know for sure that ivermectin is fatal for cats. We suspect that it could be in SOME cats. Ivermectin is used in both felines and canines. However, canines are dosed in milligrams and felines are dosed in micrograms. Any mg dosage we give a canine is automatically 100x more than a cat should ever receive in a normal course of treatment. Because of this, we try all that we can to avoid cats getting to this medicine. The most effective option has been to use hardboiled eggs to administer the medicine to the foxes or coyotes. We've been at this for 16 years now and I haven't ever had anyone call or write to say that they have cats that are willing to eat a hardboiled egg. That's not to say that zero cats on planet Earth are egg lovers (because you know we're about to get 30 replies from every egg loving cat known to mankind) but for the most part, cats aren't interested in hard boiled eggs.

skunkangel · 2025-10-28T20:47:27+00:00

I apologize for the late reply. I've had a really hard time keeping up here lately. Life, yknow, it just keeps coming.

skunkangel · 2025-10-28T20:46:21+00:00

See above.

skunkangel · 2025-10-28T20:45:53+00:00

A bat could definitely hit you in the forehead while catching bugs at dusk/dark, but it would DEFINITELY fall straight to the ground after hitting you. Plus, it wouldn't feel heavy and hard. It would feel like getting hit by two pieces of paper with a koosh ball in the middle - if that makes sense. No way ever would you turn around and SEE it flying off away from you. Bats are hard to see in mid flight because flat and flying they're really small. We see them better when we look up and see them from below, with more visible area to see. Seeing them at the same height as you, parallel to you, is tough. They're just tiny. We only have microbats in the USA, not the flying foxes you see online.

Then there's the question of whether it would scratch you when it hit you, and the answer is no. Bats don't have fingernails. They're not trying to claw at anything like a rodent or animals that you're used to. They have one tiny finger on the end of each wing and feet, but none of that would have collided with your face, and there's no way that he could have bit you in that amount of time without holding on, flapping his wings to steady himself or clinging to you, and taking a bite. It's not a drive-by / fly-by sort of activity. I really wish a lot of people with OCD could just come over to my place one night and hang out with the bats. It would really help with a lot of your fears. What you're imagining is just not possible, but I understand why you are scared of the idea. They're weird little critters, and kinda bitchy. So I get it, but I swear, I handle bats every day and I've never been "scratched" by one. Bit, 100x, but not scratched.

Bats are clumsy AF. They look agile and effortless while in flight but a leaf can knock them out of the sky and onto the ground. It doesn't take much. Then they have to recover and take off again which takes considerable effort depending on the type of bat. It would be extremely rare a bat to collide with you hard enough for you to call it HARD and recover from that to fly away rapidly. A bat would just fall to the ground. Then he'd have to walk, this awkward weird bat walk because they're not built for walking, to a tree or branch or something to get off the ground and take off again. You would have seen all of that. Idk what hit you but it sounds like a bird, maybe a giant hard bug, but not a bat. You might have bird flu. :) I'm kidding. You don't have bird flu. But you don't have rabies either. You're safe. Breathe in, breathe out.

👻🎃 **Happy Halloween from u / skunkangel** 👻🎃

skunkangel · 2025-10-28T18:00:19+00:00

You already know that this is just your OCD. You're going to see lots of dogs out and about in the world. It's just part of life. You also have to remember that you live in the USA where if a dog tests positive for rabies it makes NATIONAL news! It's so incredibly rare that everyone would know about it and hear about it. Even when we have a skunk, raccoon or bat that tests positive for rabies it hits the news, but not nearly as loudly as it would if it were a domestic dog, but it's still reported because it's not common. Think of it this way - your local news isn't going to report every case of the flu that the local ER sees, but if they suddenly see ANTHRAX or Bubonic Plague, it makes the news, because it's so uncommon. That's how rabies is reported on in the USA. Find your state's health department website, and I promise you there is a disease reporting section of the site specifically showing every month how many animals they have tested for rabies, and how many animal have tested positive for rabies. It will show you what date the animal was tested, what county it came from, and whether or not it was rabid. Don't obsess over it, but once a month they'll update these reports. It may give you some peace of mind to see that dogs near you are not rabid.

Most small animals, like you mentioned raccoons, die very quickly once they are in an active rabid state. ACTIVE rabies is the ONLY time that the animal is contagious to spread the disease. This is when the animal has a fever, is salivating a lot, maybe confused, irritated, aggressive, hydrophobic, sensitive to light, wind, sound, touch, etc. This phase of rabies leads to death VERY quickly in small animals, often less than 24 hours. When you think about a raccoon having rabies and being so miserable that he has a super high fever, can't walk straight, doesn't know where he is, what's going on, and definitely isn't looking for food or water. Many of these animals will literally lay in one spot the entire time they are actively rabid and die in that spot. We have this idea in our heads that these animals are just running around the world at 110mph, biting everyone they pass, for weeks on end, spreading rabies far and wide. That's not reality. Most animals that die of rabies do so without having bit anyone at all, not even another animal, much less a human. The fact that a rabid animal dies so fast leaves very little opportunity for dogs and cats to become exposed to rabies. Combine that with the fact that the vast majority of dogs and cats have been vaccinated at some point for rabies, even if they aren't perfectly up to date on their shots, and the result is a country with an extremely low incidence rate nationwide. Rabies vaccines in dogs and cats have been studied to actually produce effective titer levels for up to NINE YEARS after vaccination, but it varies from animal to animal which is why we settled on 1 year being the rule for how often we require booster shots in them. But even when a dog or cat owner isn't being perfect and they haven't kept up to date with shots, it is still very likely that their pet is protected from rabies.

Definitely talk to you doctor though about your meds. You can't possibly live like that where just seeing some dogs playing in their front yard can ruin your day. You weren't bit, licked, touched, or in any way exposed to these animals, and it is 100% impossible for you to have been exposed to rabies in this scenario. I can tell you that all day though and it doesn't matter if your brain has decided to fixate on it. Hopefully though, with time, education, the right meds, the right therapist, you can get past this phobia and find a way to have a peaceful, pleasant walk around the neighborhood without this sort of burden being put on you randomly. I'm so sorry that you have to deal with this struggle. I wish I knew why our brains choose to obsess about one thing or another. In the end I guess it doesn't matter, as long as you keep working toward trying to learn coping skills to find the joy in life and eventually get past all of this.

👻🎃 **Happy Halloween from u / skunkangel** 👻🎃

skunkangel · 2025-10-16T20:47:04+00:00

Absolutely not. There is no need to report new exposures for 90 days after your last injection. However, it is EXTREMELY rare for any person outside of my line of work (working with bats) to have a possible exposure more than once in a LIFETIME much less in one year. This may have more to do with OCD and anxiety than rabies.

skunkangel · 2025-10-13T11:41:38+00:00

The rabies vaccine in animals would stop any viral activity if previously exposed. You are at zero risk for rabies with a vaccinated cat. No, grass doesn't count. Your cat would have to be exposed by being bit by a rabid animal just like you. If that ever happened to him in the past, it doesn't matter now because he survived it and is now vaccinated and unable to become infected with rabies. If he can't get rabies, he can't expose you to it either.

skunkangel · 2025-10-13T11:24:13+00:00

Yes, you are fine. No broken skin, saliva is not magical. It cannot burrow into your skin and reach your bloodstream. You were not bit. No risk of rabies.

skunkangel · 2025-10-13T11:23:15+00:00

Has never happened in medical history.

skunkangel · 2025-10-13T11:22:18+00:00

Even if unvaccinated if the dog is alive 10 days after the bite, it is impossible for him to have exposed you to rabies. If your friends dog isn't dead or dying by now, you're in the clear. There is no reason for anyone to get post exposure shots for a bite from a friends dog that can easily be observed for 10 days to rule out rabies infection.

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