The Bite at the Hospital Will Kill You

As part of terrier work, I live-handle wildlife with a snare. A lot of it is released. If you do it long enough and often enough, however,you will eventually get bit.

I’ve been bit twice, once when I reached into a den to pull out some rock clutter and misjudged the location of the animal (groundhog), and once when the dog pulled a small raccoon clean out of a pipe, and I was trying to separate them before either got seriously hurt.

Both animals were in good health doing natural stuff, and I did not rush off for rabies treatment. Here’s why:

In a rural area just outside Florida's Everglades National Park, Parker spotted the cat wandering along the road. It looked skinny and sick, and when Parker, a wildlife biologist, offered up some tuna she had in her car, the cat bit her finger.

"It broke my skin with his teeth," she recalls.

After cleaning off the wound, she did some research and began worrying about rabies since Miami-Dade County had warnings about that potentially fatal disease in effect at the time.

She then drove back to her home in the Florida Keys and called the health department, but it was closed.

So she headed to the emergency room at Mariners Hospital, not far from her house. She spent about two hours in the emergency room, got two types of injections and an antibiotic and says she never talked with a doctor.

"I went home happy as a clam," she said.

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Then the bills came.

Patient: Jeannette Parker, a 44-year-old state fish-and-wildlife biologist. Insured through the American Postal Workers Union because her husband works for the federal government at Everglades National Park.

Total bill: $48,512, with $46,422 of that total for one preventive medication.


.... After accounting for the insurer's payments, Parker had to pay $4,191 for the final $344 of her deductible for the year plus her 10 percent share of the charges accepted by her insurer.

"My funeral would have been cheaper," she said.