The virus is concentrated in the saliva of a rabid animal. When saliva from an infected animal enters an open wound, scratch, or mucous membrane of a victim, the disease is transmitted. It can take from as few as nine days to over a year from the time the infected animal's saliva enters a person's body until that person begins to experience the horrible symptoms of rabies. In animals, too, signs may not appear for several weeks to months after an animal has been exposed. Early symptoms in people include pain, itching, and numbness at the site of the bite, as well as fever, sore throat, headache, and nausea.
Some individuals become irritable, agitated, anxious, or depressed.
Symptoms progress rapidly in a matter of days to painful throat spasms, delirium, paralysis, coma, and finally death. Fortunately, if treatment is started early after exposure, the disease can be effectively stopped. Rabid animals show abnormal behaviors. Wild animals may act tame while normally docile pets may become aggressive. Rabid animals, wild or domestic, may stagger, appear restless, become mean, change the tone of their barks or growls, or appear to be choking.