Wolf Crossing

The most disturbing this about this tale is that this couple appear to feel sorrier for having to kill a rabid animal that has inflicted a fatal disease on them than they do potentially exposing everyone around them to a fatal horriffic disease.  This animal love at all costs is just plain idiotic. Someone needs badly to gently suggest to Arizona that vectors of this disease are controlled again.  Insanely, Arizona has no trapping season as it is considered inhumane.  Rabies is becomming prevalent in the state and has now been spread to the neighboring state of New Mexico.  Apparently animals and their feelings are more important that human health and safety these days.  Creating wildlife utopias with the consequence of third world nation diseases is the result of masses of really stupid people moving west in droves.  Let me tell you a canine, or cat comes at me in the daytime and I will kill it happily to prevent the spread of this thing to humans pets livestock and wildlife.   

Rabid bobcat attacks hikers
Sandy Rathbun Reports
Rabid bobcat attacks hikers

Posted: April 24, 2008 08:34 PM MDT
Saturday in the Santa Rita Mountains a rabid bobcat attacked two local hikers.  After a 10 minute fight, one of the hikers killed the sick animal. 
Rich Thompson says, “As soon as I saw it I just knew, rabid bobcat.”
Immediately, Thompson says, the bobcat jumped on his wife and and bit her on her calf.
Thompson demonstrates, “She grabbed it and threw it off and then it leaped up and just attached itself about from here to here and just would not let go.  So I got my backpack off and used it like a club, like a weapon and knocked it off her.”
Then, as his wife got away, Thompson says the animal attacked him over and over again.
Thompson points, “The first time it got me, it landed on my back.  So I ended up with a wound here and a wound here.  And another time it attacked me right front on and I had a pretty good one here {on the top of his leg).”
  
For 10 minutes Thompson, a geologist, fought the cat with his hands, a stick and his rock hammer.
He says, “Eventually I was able to pin it with the stick and finish it.”
Thompson says killing the bobcat was necessary, but terribly sad.  He loves wildlife and will never forget the cat’s face.
Thompson says, “Rabies is a nerve disease and its brain was being eaten alive while it was alive.  So it was not a happy way to go.”
Thompson and his wife are getting rabies shots to prevent them from developing the fatal disease.
Arizona Game and Fish Wildlife Manager Mark Frieberg says, when Thompson and his wife couldn’t get away from the cat,  Thompson had no choice but to kill it.
How can you tell if an animal is rabid?  Frieberg says, “Wildlife usually like to get away from people.  They’ll run away.  With a rabid animal, they lose their fear of humans and they show aggression.  That’s what happened here.”