'Stumbling, drooling' moose tests positive for rabies in Alaska, a state first

Officials in Alaska this week confirmed a moose seen acting aggressively towards people tested positive for rabies, a first in state history.

The state’s Department of Fish and Game announced it killed the moose after it was seen wandering through the community of Teller in Western Alaska and charging people.

The moose was “unbalanced, stumbling, drooling profusely, and had bare patches of skin,” the agency wrote in a press release issued Wednesday.

Fish and Game staff said it consulted with the department’s wildlife veterinarian Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, collected samples from the moose, sent them for testing and burned the animal’s body as a precaution.

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Necropsy reveals moose was rabid

During a necropsy Monday, the Alaska State Virology Laboratory detected rabies in the moose’s brain and the following day, according to the release, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention further confirmed the virus was “an Arctic Fox rabies variant.”

“This is the same variant circulating in red foxes during the outbreak in the Nome/Seward Peninsula and North Slope arctic foxes this past winter, suggesting the moose contracted the virus from a fox,” Fish and Game officials said.

The case, officials added, marked the first confirmed report of rabies in a moose in the state.

A first for Alaska

According to Fish and Game officials, a rabies diagnosis in a moose is rare, but there have been moose confirmed with rabies in South Dakota, Minnesota, Canada and Russia.

In Alaska, officials said, only those moose with neurologic signs are screened for rabies.

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Increased rabies testing

Because of the new case, Fish and Game officials said they plan to amp rabies surveillance by testing all brain samples from mammals found dead or euthanized from regions with enzootic fox rabies.