Edit: doctor just checked me out and isn't worried at all
My dogs found a baby raccoon last night, they didn't hurt her just did some aggressive sniffing. I picked her up and after a minute she chilled out and snuggled into me. Eventually she started crawling around and managed to give me a very minor scratch.
The problem is if a raccoon causes even a minor scratch it has to be put down and tested for rabies. I can't let that happen. But if I tell anyone, particularly my wife, they'll insist on it. Rabies is terrifying but there have only been 5 cases in my entire county in the past two years. The chances of getting rabies from a scratch are fairly low too. Still I'm a little worried for myself but not enough to allow an animal to be killed.
She's sleeping in a box outside now, I don't know if I should go hide her then tell someone or what. The preventive treatment they give if the animal can't be tested is rather painful and very expensive. I just can't let something die on the very small chance it could have infected me.
I'm really rather upset and don't know what to do.
This is why you don't pick up wild animals, but I'm sure you knew that and were just enraptured by the :comrade-raccoon:
I love raccoons - they're my favorite animal and probably the animal I would be if given a choice. But both my parents being in the medical profession in a rural part of our state has given me a healthy fear of rabies. I would take the little one in and surrender it so you don't wind up hydrophobic and foaming at the mouth in 48 hours.
Of course, living in a rural farm town for most of my life -- I have definitely been scratched before by animals and played a dangerous game with not reporting/ignoring it so.... :vivian-shrug:
Raccoons are a bit different imo than a random dog/cat/etc scratch, though, since they forage a lot for their food and likely have salmonella/roundworm that they can pass on to you at the very least if not rabies.
I live in an incredibly rural area too and have rehabilitated a bunch of wild animals. Never really worried about getting scratched before, the difference this time is raccoons are the number one carriers of rabies.