{"id":34163,"date":"2023-08-02T10:02:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T14:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=34163"},"modified":"2023-08-02T10:02:57","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T14:02:57","slug":"raccoon-tests-positive-for-rabies-in-polk-county-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/08\/02\/raccoon-tests-positive-for-rabies-in-polk-county-officials-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Raccoon tests positive for rabies in Polk County, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Polk County confirmed its third case of rabies this year after a family dog fought with an aggressive raccoon, deputies said.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Polk County Sheriff’s Office says the incident happened on July 26 in the Green Road area of unincorporated Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dog’s owner shot and killed the raccoon when it would not let go of the dog, deputies said. The family then contacted PCSO Animal Control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PCSO says a deputy took the raccoon carcass to Tampa for testing. Officials received the test results from the state laboratory on Tuesday, Aug. 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results showed that the raccoon was positive for rabies, according to PCSO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement that the dogs injuries were minor, and it was given a rabies vaccine after the incident. The dog will also be quarantined to ensure it wasn’t infected by the raccoon, the sheriff said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Please, if you find a wild animal in distress, appearing sick, or acting aggressive, stay away from it and contact Animal Control immediately,” said Sheriff Judd in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polk County confirmed its third case of rabies this year after a family dog fought with an aggressive raccoon, deputies said. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office says the incident happened on… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[5555,5556],"class_list":["post-34163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-officials-say","tag-raccoon-tests-positive-for-rabies-in-polk-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}