Dalton airport hosts federal rabies control project

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Jordona Kirtyb, the rabies field coordinator for the USDA, talks on Tuesday at the Dalton Airport about the rabies vaccine that is being dropped into forest areas. (Misty Watson/The Daily Citizen)
Jordona Kirtyb, the rabies field coordinator for the USDA, talks on Tuesday at the Dalton Airport about the rabies vaccine that is being dropped into forest areas. (Misty Watson/The Daily Citizen)
Hank Henson, a lineman for Crystal Air, refuels a plane before it takes off to drop rabies vaccines on Tuesday at the Dalton Airport. (Misty Watson/The Daily Citizen)

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October 17, 2012

Dalton airport hosts federal rabies control project

Charles Oliver charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com The Dalton Daily Citizen Wed Oct 17, 2012, 09:00 AM EDT

Vaccinating raccoons slows the spread of rabies. But how do you inoculate thousands of raccoons spread across several different states?

Well, if you are the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), you drop oral vaccine, wrapped in a tasty treat, from airplanes across rural areas and let the raccoons chow down.

On Tuesday, USDA planes taking off from Dalton Municipal Airport flew across the Southeast to spread the vaccine.

“We have five aircraft and 21 of our USDA crew and six pilots out here,” said rabies control coordinator Jordona Kirby. “We are distributing over 600,000 of these vaccines over several thousand square kilometers, including parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. From this location, we are able to stop the spread of rabies.”

The vaccines look basically like ketchup packets. They are covered with fish oil and fish meal. To a human, they don’t exactly smell nice. But Kirby said raccoons think they are real treats. They bite into the packets and get a dose of the vaccine.

“We actually do this over 15 states in the eastern part of the United States. We see most cases of rabies in raccoons and most of them are in the eastern United States,” Kirby said.

The crew arrived Saturday and began distributing the vaccine on Monday.

“We’d completed an operation in Greeneville, Tenn., where we covered parts of Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina,” Kirby said. “And we moved to Dalton. We will finish today.”

Kirby said the USDA has been spreading the vaccine annually since 2003. This is the second year the agency has used the Dalton airport.

“It’s a great location. It gives us the ability to hit a lot of the areas we want to hit,” she said. “And the people at the airport are really great to work with. They make our job a lot easier.”

Kirby says the vaccine program begins during the summer in New England and works its way down south to Dalton.

“We have to time it with the behavior of raccoons. We start in New England because that allows us to go back into those areas and sample the raccoons to make sure they have gotten the vaccine,” she said. “By the time we get here, it allows us to come back in November or December to capture raccoons. If we waited that late in the Northeastern states, their raccoons are usually denned up for the winter.”

Airport Manager Frank Hubbs said the operation seemed to be going very smoothly.

“They are very easy to work with. They are very accommodating. We are happy to host them, and we think it benefits the community,” he said.

Kirby says vaccine packets aren’t dropped over urban areas, but if a pet or other animal does somehow come into contact with one they won’t be hurt.

“They have been tested safely in more than 60 different species, including dogs and cats. We do ask if someone finds one that they safely dispose of it using a paper towel or a disposable glove,” Kirby said. “If they’ve got a wooded area around their home, we ask that they put it there, to allow a wild animal a chance to get it.”

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Dalton airport hosts federal rabies control project

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