The Minister of Agriculture sent warning letters to ten thousand homes urging all in the area of Camberley to be on the look-out for symptoms of rabies in cats and dogs. Badger setts, rabbit warrens and fox lairs were filled with lethal cyanide gas. Sixty marksmen and fifty assistants were employed to shoot all wild animals in the area, save deer. Once dead, the animals were collected and forwarded to a research center for analysis. The reason for sparing the deer has never been made clear.
Deer are, of course, susceptible to rabies.
Approximately one hundred were lost during a rabies outbreak near Barnsley in 1856. Perhaps the large scale killing of deer was seen as potentially damaging to the public perception of the Ministry. Appearing unconcerned about the rabies threat such creatures were said to harbour, a Ministry official was photographed at Camberley with a recently killed fox in hand. That a Ministry employee appears to have been completely at ease handling a recently killed fox from the area in which Fritz was suggested to have spread the deadly disease certainly raises questions about how seriously the Ministry viewed the threat. Nonetheless, the killing was authorized and condoned.