Virginia Rabies Death: Be Careful Out There

From The Washington Post, May 30, 2005
Article by Timothy Dwyer

Death a Dire Reminder of Rabies Threat; Fairfax Virginia Family Copes With Raccoon Strain's Only Human Fatality


Edward P. Hurley III -- Eddie to everyone who knew him -- was the kind of guy who never got sick. He was a touch over 6 feet tall and kept in shape by jogging and playing on two softball teams.

Two years ago, on Valentine's Day, he developed a low-grade fever. His family figured he was coming down with the flu. But for 10 days he just couldn't seem to shake the fever. On the 11th day, he was slurring his words and had trouble keeping his balance. Four days later, he went into a coma. On March 10, Hurley, 25 -- his brain no longer functioning -- died. Doctors told his family that they thought he had meningitis and encephalitis.

In June, they were given a different cause of death by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hurley had died of rabies.

He is the first and only person in the United States to die of raccoon rabies, Virginia Health Department officials have said.

Rabies has taken up permanent residence in the Washington area. The raccoon strain of rabies has infected the region's fox, groundhog and squirrel populations, in addition to the raccoons. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a wildlife oral-vaccination campaign underway in parts of the country, including southwest Virginia, that is designed to keep the disease from spreading, but it doesn't get rid of it where it is established. For now, people in the area -- and their pets -- have no choice but to live among rabid wildlife.

"Rabies is a cyclical thing," said Earl Hodnett, a wildlife biologist for Fairfax County. "But what really drives the number of human exposures is the increase in population. As areas become more developed, the chance of encountering a rabid raccoon is greatly increased."

Eddie Hurley never had been identified publicly as the Northern Virginia man who died of rabies in 2003. For privacy reasons, his name was withheld by authorities when they announced the cause of death. Recently, his parents, Kathleen and Edward P. Hurley Jr., sat at the dining room table in their Herndon home and talked about their son's death. They agreed to speak because they believe their experience could help educate the public about rabies.

"People know of the disease," Ed Hurley Jr. said, "but I don't think they understand how easy it is to get it. I am not 100 percent sure that most people know you can die from it."

Eddie Hurley died a horrible death. The disease attacked his nervous system, slowly taking away his speech, his balance, altering his moods and then attacking his brain. His family has no idea how or when he contracted the disease.

"Eddie's nature was such that if, in fact, he was ever bitten by something, he would almost brag about it," his father said. "You know: 'Hey, guess what happened to me? I've just got bitten,' or whatever. So we don't know whether he had a cut on his leg or his hand and some dog happened to lick him while he was jogging .... We couldn't put a handle on it. We do know he was not an animal lover."

His mother and father sat at the table in a home still filled with Eddie's life. Photos of him, along with his brother and sister, are all over the house. As they spoke, Kathy Hurley showed off his wedding picture. Often, Ed and Kathy Hurley would finish each other's thoughts when they spoke of their son.

Looking back, Ed Hurley said he is glad they did not know their son was infected with the rabies virus, because once the symptoms appear, death is all but certain. If an antiviral treatment is begun immediately after contact with a rabid animal, survival is likely.

"I think it would have been more difficult to have gotten through it if we had known that there was no hope," Hurley's father said. "We still felt a great deal of helplessness. It was almost like you want to reach out and grab whatever it is that is taking him over and pull it out of him."

Richard Cash is a first responder in the war against rabies. Cash, 25, has been a Fairfax County animal control officer for 4 1/2 years. He drives a van with all sizes of cages in the rear. Up front, he has a cell phone, a police radio and a laptop computer mounted on a bracket. He is well-armed. In addition to his sidearm, Cash has a standard-issue police shotgun, a tranquilizer gun and a .22 rifle. "That is the one we use frequently on wildlife," he said recently while answering calls in the county.

Cash was on the way to Alexandria, where a raccoon was stuck in a trash bin outside a commercial property. "It doesn't sound like it is rabid, but you don't know until you get there," he said.

In August, Cash had a close encounter with a rabid fox. The fox had attacked three girls in Herndon, and Cash was sent to the neighborhood the next day to track the animal. He said he found the fox and it was "very aggressive." When Cash tried to catch it, it bit him in the leg.

"We shot the animal and killed it, and it came back positive for the rabies virus," he said. "Luckily for me, I had the benefit of being pre-vaccinated. I did go in and get a booster shot as a precautionary thing, and I haven't sustained any problems from it at all."

Cash has no illusions about winning the war on rabies. "You can't control it," he said. "I think it is beneficial to know where it is, just so we are able to keep track of it. We are able, just by our caseload, to determine where we have more of a problem, in what particular areas."

The first rabid raccoon documented in Northern Virginia was in Loudoun County in 1981, according to Suzanne Jenkins, an epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health. That year, 48 raccoons tested positive. In 1982, 269 raccoons tested positive in Fairfax County and 267 in Loudoun. The disease spread because the raccoon population never had been exposed to it and had no natural immunity, Jenkins said. Since then, the disease has been a constant presence, but not in such high numbers.

"Where you have more humans, you are going to have more sightings of rabid animals and more are going to get tested," Jenkins said. "We certainly know that in suburban areas, the animals are very well fed with trash cans and pet food that is left outside, on porches or decks, and bird feeders, you name it. Their population is going to grow as much as resources allow it."

When Cash arrived at his call in Alexandria, the raccoon was gone. Cash said the number of rabies-related calls per shift varies. Some days he has none; others, he might have seven or eight. Spring and summer are the busiest times of the year for rabies calls.

"In my opinion," he said, "it is a big concern. I encounter it way too often for it not to be a problem."

Kathleen Hurley said she thinks about her son "every day, all day." To watch him slip away was painful, she said, and the pain is fresh and raw today.

"And of all things," his mother said, "his brain. That's what bothered me the most, that he was such a smart kid and had such potential."

Eddie Hurley had a degree in electrical engineering form the University of Virginia. He was working on his master's degree at Virginia Tech when he died. He was awarded that degree posthumously. He married his wife, Suzzette, in June 2001 and was buried on St. Patrick's Day, about two months short of their second anniversary. Hurley worked at Lockheed Martin. "He loved his work," his father said, "but he wasn't allowed to talk about it. He had a security clearance."

Before he lapsed into a coma, Hurley would look at his mother from his hospital bed and she could see the confusion in his eyes. Most of his life, Eddie Hurley could always figure things out -- but he
could not understand what had taken over his body.

"He would ask me, 'When do you think I will get out of here?' " his mother said. "He just wanted to go home. He asked me several times when I thought he'd get out of the hospital."

The Hurley family had one more encounter with rabies after Hurley's death. In the first week of January 2004, a memorial Mass was scheduled for Eddie Hurley. That morning, Kathy Hurley went out on the deck and noticed a dead raccoon under the boards. She called Animal Control and was told that officers would come to the house as soon as possible. A short time later, she walked out the back door and noticed a fox in the tree line behind their home. The fox was acting weird. She called Animal Control again. Officers were dispatched immediately.

The fox was killed by the officers. The raccoon and fox tested positive for rabies.

Kathy Hurley sat at the dining room table, holding her son's wedding picture in her hand. When she finished the story, she was quiet for a moment.

Her husband shook his head. "Not to find one rabid animal, but to find two," he said, "and to find them on the same day you are having a Mass."

For the Hurleys, it was an unnecessary reminder of how rabies has become a fixture in the suburbs.