Fox victim speaks out

Mother: ‘I feel let down that nobody warned us’

CAPE ELIZABETH — The South Portland mother of a 3-year-old boy who was attacked by a rabid fox in Cape Elizabeth’s Two Lights State Park last week is disputing the official version of events.

Within hours of the July 7 incident, multiple media sources were quoting Department of Conservation spokeswoman Jeanne Curran, who said the action began at noon, when a ranger was attacked while getting into his service vehicle.

Park Manager John Polackwich also said the first attacked happened at noon, a time everyone agrees on because the ranger, Ron Ahlquist, was attacked just as he was coming on duty. Ahlquist was not injured and the fox ran off toward the eastern side of the park. A 5-acre trail network in that area was immediately shut down, Polackwich said, and South Portland Animal Control Officer Corey Hamilton was called in to help locate the animal.

Polackwich and Curren both said it was about 45 minutes later, while rangers were still searching for the fox, that it turned up in the playground and bit the young boy because, they said, “He thought that the fox was a nice kitty and tried to pet it.” As the story goes, a park ranger chased the fox off, using a weed trimmer as a makeshift weapon.

“He then ushered them into the bathrooms for safety and closed the door behind them,” said Polackwich.

That’s when rangers shut down the entire park, he said, adding that it took about 20 minutes to taking evacuate the park of roughly 40 people.

But Sybil Wilen of South Portland claims that’s not how it happened at all.

“The very earliest we could have arrived was around 1 p.m.” she said Monday.

Wilen said she and her children – ages 3, 5, 10 and 13 – met up with a friend and her child for an afternoon in the park.

“Nobody said anything to us when we got there,” she said. “We were in the playground, in the woods, by rocks. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We were there for at least an hour before the attack happened.”

According to Ed Hunt of the Cape Elizabeth Police Department, the first 911 call that sent police and emergency personnel to the park came in at 2:46 p.m., long after 12:45 p.m., as claimed by park officials in all reports before Wilen came forward.

On Tuesday, Polackwich said Wilen’s recollection is “probably correct.”

“We weren’t keeping track of watches,” he said. “Our chief concern was with the safety of our patrons in the park, with finding the animal and making certain that everybody got out safely.”

Wilen is upset, however, that she wasn’t notified of the attack on the ranger.

“I just wish somebody had said something when we came in,” said Wilen. “If I had known that were was an animal acting erratically, I wouldn’t have brought five children into the park.

“When we were walking on the trails, we saw one or two rangers around and nobody ever bothered to say, hey, you might want to keep the kids together, or that there’s an strange-acting animal running around,” said Wilen. “We most definitely would have come back another day, but we wouldn’t have stayed that day.”

After returning to the playground area, Wilen said, she noticed that a trail her family had taken when they first arrived, which starts at the bathrooms, had been blocked off. However, with nothing to indicate why, she thought nothing of it, assuming someone had rented the shelter further up the trail, as she had several years earlier when she got married.

It was soon after that when the fox attacked her and her children, the second within two hours.

The first attack happened to Ahlquist when he checked in at the main office for his shift. Ahlquist, who also sits on the Scarborough Town Council, was getting into his service truck to head over to his patrol at Crescent Beach when the fox lurched at him from beneath the vehicle.

“It grabbed me and wouldn’t let go,” he said. “It was viciously just shaking my sneaker. I finally kicked it off and it lunged at me again.

“It did that three times,” said Ahlquist. “I had shorts on, my legs were bare, but luckily it kept going for the sneaker for some reason. I kept hollering to [fellow Park Ranger] John Horton, ‘It won’t let go! It won’t let go!’”

Ahlquist said the sneaker fixation was not the only clue that this fox was not in its right mind.

“I’ve been around animals my whole life,” he said. “This was making the oddest noises, like I’ve never heard before.”

When the fox made its next public appearance two hours later, it was not because her son tried to pet it, said Wilen. Instead, she said, the first indication anyone in her family had of its presence was when Horton started screaming.

“One of the rangers came running around the bathroom area screaming to get up on something,” recalled Wilen, imitating Horton’s call to “‘Get up! Get up! Kids, get away! Get away!’” 

“The next thing I knew the fox was on my son,” said Wilen. “He was down and struggling with it and it was hanging off of his hand at that point. I tried to pick it up and it wouldn’t let go, so I started hitting it on head, punching it and stuff until it fell off.”

By then, Wilen’s son, Theo, had bites on his feet and ankles, a “pretty deep” laceration near his Achilles’ tendon and a puncture wound in his hand deep enough that it chipped a bone. That’s when the fox turned on Wilen.

“It kept attacking, biting at my feet and ankles,” she said. “It was attacking my skirt. It got stuck up in it a few times and was hanging off of me.”

And what of official reports that Horton chased off the fox with a weed trimmer and guided the Wilen family to safety? Wilen said she saw Horton holding something, but, in the excitement, assumed it was a net or a stick.

“I thought he was going to catch the fox and save us and everything was going to be OK, but he never came over and did that,” said Wilen. Instead, she said, it was her other children who charged the fox, screaming at it to go away.

“All together, we just kept backing up until we hit the bathrooms and my 10-year-old said, ‘Let’s get in there!’ So, all of us ran in and slammed the door.

“I know the ranger was there,” said Wilen, “but I don’t remember seeing him at this time. My friend who was there managed to climb up onto the playground equipment with her son, and she said that after we went in the bathroom he ran away. I’m assuming he went to get help.”

Wilen never found out, and spent 15 frantic minutes in the windowless bathroom, trying to clean Theo’s wounds, while calming her other children’s nerves.

“He was bleeding pretty bad,” said Wilen. “I was scared. I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be there. My kids were frightened. They were crying, they were screaming.  I mean, they had been very heroic, but by the time we got in there they were breaking down a bit and I thought we would be in there a long time.”

Wilen said she could hear her friend yelling for someone to call 911, which a local resident who heard all the commotion did.

Eventually, after 15 minutes had passed, the coast was clear. When the Wilen family emerged, a couple of rangers were on scene and an ambulance was pulling up. Empathy on the part of park staff seemed lacking, said Wilen.

“Eventually, we just came out,” she said. “Nobody came in to get us, or check on us.”

Soon after, the fox was found near the park’s front gate. It was clubbed, then shot, by a Cape Elizabeth patrolman, before being “dispatched” by the animal control officer. Wilen and her son were taken to Maine Medical Center, where Theo was kept overnight for observation. The park reopened at about 4 p.m.

Polackwich said Tuesday that he does not dispute Wilen’s account of events. He attributed the different versions to varying perceptions in the heat of the moment. The story released to the press was an amalgamation of different things he was told by his staff, he said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to interview the family,” he said, “but my priority was getting them taken care of and off to the hospital.”

Polackwich said that, as of Tuesday, he also had yet to debrief Horton.

“It was a potentially a pretty dangerous situation,” he said, repeating his statement on the day of the attack. “Everybody involved did a fantastic job. They couldn’t have been more professional.”

Wilen said she does not fault anyone’s behavior, during or after the incident. She just thinks it never had to happen.

“In our case, there was nothing anybody could have done,” she said. “The only thing that could have avoided my son getting attacked would have been if somebody had said something, if somebody told us not to go in there, which is kind of what I think they should have done.”

The fox, described by Hamilton as “about 1½ years old and weighing 15 to 16 pounds,” was tested Friday at the Maine State Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory and found to be rabid.

According to Hamilton, this is the second rabid fox found in Cape Elizabeth this year. A Maine Department of Conservation press release lists it as the ninth animal tested and found rabid in Cumberland County this year. Statewide, 26 animals have tested positive for rabies so far in 2011.

State Epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Sears of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that although this is not an unusual amount – about 50 to 60 animals test positive for rabies in Maine every year, primarily bats, foxes, raccoons and skunks – people should avoid contact with wild animals and make sure their pets are up to date on rabies vaccinations.

“That’s the message: Let wild things be wild,” Sears said Monday. “And that’s why it’s so important that pets be vaccinated, because people’s pets are far more likely to encounter wild animals than they are.”

Luckily for Wilen and Theo, early treatment can ward of the possibility of contracting the disease, even after exposure through a bite or scratch.

“People still have this image of a series of 21 shots to the stomach, but, luckily, that’s not the way it is anymore,” said Sears, describing instead a series of five shots, administered as with any normal syringe, which help produce antibodies to fight off any infection. The first two shots, a globulin given in or near the wound area for immediate protection, and a vaccine, are given right away. The final three vaccine doses are taken weekly.

Wilen said she and her son have already taken three shots in the series.

“It was very unfortunate that the child and mother were bitten and we wish them a speedy recovery,” said Will Harris, director of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Land, in a press release issued Friday. “We hope our visitors will continue to enjoy our state parks, and we will continue to do everything we can to make sure they have a positive experience.”

“I’m not going to stop going to state parks,” said Wilen, though she said Theo is less enthused about a return trip.

“He’s been a trooper,” she said. “He doesn’t want to go back to Two Lights, but we’re hoping we can get him eventually to feel more secure.”

Wilen said Theo did say that he thought at first that it was a cat that had attacked him out of the blue. He understands now, she said, that the fox was sick.

The bigger issue, Wilen said, is convincing others that she and Theo are not.

“When we first came back from the hospital, everybody was a little nervous,” she recalled. “My 10-year-old asked if we were contagious.”