So we live out in a mostly rural area... My wife comes running into the shop after dark (about an hour past sundown) saying there's a fox by the propane tank near the house. Our kids were still outside running around, so I head over to check it out.

The dogs were in the fenced area with the livestock, so thankfully they didn't have access to it. I fired off two rounds near the fox to scare it off, but it just sat there staring at me with no fear at all. No foaming at the mouth or anything like that, but it wasn't acting right. I ended up dispatching it.

None of us touched it. We had to leave early the next morning and didn't have time to deal with it, so the carcass sat overnight. When we got back, I used a shovel to push it into the tractor bucket, dumped it, buried it with about 4 feet of dirt, packed it down, and cleaned the tools and bucket with disinfectant. Figured that was the end of it.

Then two neighbors tell me horror stories... one about skunks clawing cattle, and two heifers supposedly getting rabies years back. So now I'm second-guessing everything.

And to top it off... while I was washing the tractor bucket… a skunk comes hauling ass across the pasture in daytime straight toward me. At that point I'm thinking, "Alright Lord, are you trying to tell me something here?"

Anyhow, nobody touched the fox, dogs didn't interact with it, kids are fine, but it made me start wondering… How contagious is rabies really? Is it safe for the kids to play in the yard? Just trying to understand how all this works. Every time I ask someone I get a different answer. Apparently if you don't get treatment for it you die as there is no cure for rabies... Stuff you don't think about until you have to deal with it I guess... been in the country all my life and well never really had to deal with many rabid animals thankfully...

I'm not trying to be dramatic, I've just never seen a fox act like that. Thought maybe distemper at first, but the eyes looked clear.

Pic attached for reference. Curious what y'all think.

SanAntoneAg said:

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Sounds like pretty normal behavior for a fox.

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typically they run off... shot two 9mm rounds about five feet from its front legs and it just sat there perfectly still starring at me... dogs barking at it... nothing... didn't move

If you're in a populated rural area the fox is probably used to human interaction and contact. From your picture it looks like a juvenile/young fox. It's coat and body look healthy. Young foxes oftentimes have not learned all the fear of adult foxes and will not necessarily immediately run away.

Similar for us at the ranch in Texas many times. We had a mama fox and her young'ns that would come into our backyard and they would hang around my wood piles.
Mom was leery of us but the young guys were not. It took them a while to get afraid of us.
We had an orphaned young fox that would stay at our barn about everyday. It showed little fear for our barn cat, my lab, myself or my wife……and hung around for almost two years before just disappearing.

Could it be distemper and not rabies?
It's highly contagious in both foxes and skunks.

10-4 thanks for the replies... worth noting it had an arched back when standing (like scared cat) was just off... wouldn't run off... sort of walked backwards with back arched into propane tank... weird stuff... just was more curious than anything... all these years I guess I've never given concern but maybe I should have... agree, always good to be cautious...

Yes sir. As the old saying goes….better to be safe than sorry for sure.

I've had a family of foxes that I believe live in or a round a tin horn just a few feet past my property line for about or 15 years. This time of year you can see them under street light and security lights. In the summer they are out in the day. My belief is they don't have enough darkness to hunt for themselves and the kits, and sometimes the kits are with one of them.

I wouldn't say they are friendly, but they are very curious and are not bothered by people that don't get too close and they will get closer to you to see what you're up to than they will let you get to them if you happen upon them.

There was a skunk that live in a crawl space where I used to work that would do the same thing, everyone was interested in getting away when they figured out it was nearby.

Fox will come right up to our house and eat cat food out of a bowl if the cats don't get it first. Less skittish than yotes.

10-4. From what I understand, rabies is not a "it was nearby" situation. You basically need a real exposure event like getting bitten, scratched, or having saliva get into your eyes, mouth, or nose. An open cut could matter too, but it still has to be a legit saliva-to-wound event, not just "I had a random paper cut somewhere on my hand." By open cut, I mean an actual open wound, not dry skin or a sealed scab.

In my case, I shot the animal from a few feet away with one of those Vortex gas spring pellet rifles. It is what I had on hand. We just moved and it was literally sitting right by the propane tank and back window. I did not feel great about touching off an AR or shotgun that close to a propane tank and windows. Plus that spot is basically solid rock everywhere. It was also a small juvenile fox. I get that people say not to shoot the head, but given the platform I was using, that felt like the most humane shot placement. There was no visible blood, saliva, or brain matter splatter. I moved it with a shovel into the tractor bucket while wearing leather gloves, buried it using the bucket, and washed the bucket and shovel the next day. I never handled the animal directly. That is just not a realistic route for rabies exposure.

I think a lot of people get spun up because they do not actually know what counts as an "exposure event." I talked to a guy who got PEP after a coon scratch. Some folks also get it if they suspect livestock or pets were exposed, which makes sense because those are real situations where you want to be careful. A local vet mentioned something like livestock being rabid and getting slobber directly into your eyes or mouth. That would obviously be a legit scenario to take seriously. But you go look at Reddit and Google forums and people are losing their minds over "my neighbor's barn cat licked my leg." There is a lot of confusion out there about what actually constitutes exposure.

Rabies is serious, but in the US human deaths are usually very low each year. Meanwhile we have people eating Tide Pods on YouTube. So yes, take precautions, but also do not let the internet turn every non-event into a medical emergency.

It is kind of funny though. I have lived in the country my whole life (Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina) and never once worried about rabies until now. I am in my 40s, and back in the 90s we did dumb stuff like picking up bats and handling problems without thinking twice. Same with barn cats. Half the time they were not vaccinated and everybody got clawed eventually. When you look back at how people used to live, coon hunters, farm kids, everybody, it does make you question how transmissible rabies really is outside of obvious bite or direct exposure scenarios. Either way, I took this situation and the stories going around as a good excuse to educate myself better. Always good to be careful.

My wife's undergrad and grad work were centered around biomedical science at A&M and she works in healthcare. She actually finds the whole topic pretty interesting too.

Also, looking at publicly available rabies surveillance info from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, fox rabies looks very uncommon in this region compared to skunks and bats. I am right on the Oklahoma/Arkansas border.

Arkansas reports in recent years show positives are almost entirely skunks and bats, with no fox positives listed in the most recent annual summaries I found. Oklahoma also appears heavily dominated by skunk and bat rabies strains, and fox positives seem rare.

Texas is a little different. The "Texas gray fox" rabies variant has essentially been eliminated for years, but you can still see occasional fox positives pop up from other variants depending on location.

I am not saying it is impossible. I am just putting the actual data and risk in perspective.

AgResearch said:

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Fox will come right up to our house and eat cat food out of a bowl if the cats don't get it first. Less skittish than yotes.

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They are curious by nature. Probably had a den near / under the propane tank.