In 1990 I received a series of vaccines for initial protection. It was the same series you would get after possible exposure, except my series lacked gamma globulin (one less injection). I had worsening reactions (severe headache, joint pain) with each injection. I had my titer checked seven years later and still had immunity.
Interestingly, in 1990 the vaccine cost around $100 a pop. It was chemically identical to the canine vaccine marketed by the company and wholesaling at the time for around .80 a dose. Same vaccine, different label.
Final outcome:
I had some screened topsoil left over from a project involving pachysandra, so I dumped two wheelbarrows of dirt on top of the lime which is on top of the coon. No odor anymore. Oh, and we ate out, just in case.
On This American Life, they featured a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon (it took 4 people to pull it off of her, IIRC) and she had a hell of a time getting the health dept./hospitals to give her the vaccination because they didn’t want to pay for the shots. You can listen to it here. She was very calm about the whole thing. Were it me, I’d show up in the nearest emergency room and “explain” to the docs on duty that they can give me the vaccinations, or I can start biting them.
Is your neighbor a doper, because I’m wondering if next week we’ll see an OP wondering if it’s normal for a dying coon to attempt to cover itself with quick lime and two wheelbarrows worth of topsoil.
Am I misremembering, or does lime actually encourage the process of saponification, converting fatty tissues to soap and encouraging the preservation of the body (in soapy form, anyway) and thus reducing the smell of decomposition by, well, preventing ordinary microbial decomposition?
I have noted above (as have other Dopers) that lime is credited with preserving bodies (although there’s some controversy about whether that’s actually true. I have heard that it promotes saponification, although I didn’t write that. I’ve never heard that lime reduces odors by any mechanism (at least until this thread).
I got the same series in 2002 when I started trapping feral cats; fortunately my boss paid for it. I looked all over town for some of the “foams in the mouth” candies to use on the guy who gave me the injections but didn’t have any luck. I was also lucky in that I had no reactions to the vaccine other than injection site soreness. I was, however, kind of pissed off that I didn’t get a nifty little tag like my cats do!
