Animal control officials issued alerts about rabid raccoons. One attacked a family’s pet dog and was killed by the dog’s owner in Huntersville. A dog killed the other crazed critter in the Steele Creek area. ||||| 'The Worst I've Ever Seen'; Fires Sweep Through Southeastern U.S. 
 
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 "No one can remember a wildfire as peculiar as the monster gnawing through the gorge above the village of Chimney Rock," began an article Monday in the Charlotte Observer. 
 
 The blaze in question is one of dozens of partially contained wildfires, some of them suspected cases of arson, burning across the Southeast. In Alabama alone, there are currently 20 fires burning, and more than 1,500 blazes have burned there since October 1, according to the Alabama Forestry Commission. 
 
 People are being evacuated in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, including in and around Chimney Rock, N.C., where the erratic fire described in the Observer has enveloped some 3,000 acres since Saturday, according to the U.S. Forest Service. 
 
 As of Monday afternoon, that blaze was only 15 percent contained. 
 
 "This fire has the characteristics of western fires, of California fires," Richard Barnwell, the 74-year-old fire chief for the town of Bat Cave, N.C., told the Observer. "This is the worst I've ever seen." 
 
 Even the mountain coyotes are spooked. "We've had sightings of them from several people," Carrie Harmon of the N.C. Forest Service told the paper. 
 
 Like many fires in the region, the cause of the Bat Cave/Chimney Rock blaze is still under investigation. Just over the state line in northern Georgia, authorities think someone started a 4,000-acre fire, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Starting fires is banned in the entire Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, where this fire is burning. 
 
 In northeast Georgia, the Rabun County Sheriff's Office said on Facebook that it was was looking for "a dark blue SUV driven by a person of interest" in connection with fires that forced parts of that county to be evacuated. 
 
 In Tennessee, police arrested a man suspected of setting fires in the eastern part of the state. Andrew Scott Lewis is charged with three counts of setting fire to personal property or land and "vandalism over $250,000," according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. 
 
 On Friday, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced the state would pay a $5,000 reward to anyone with information about who set the fires burning in that state. In a statement, Bentley reminded residents that a severe, months-long drought increased the risk of fires, and posed "a real danger to Alabama wildland and property." 
 
 As we have reported, nearly 40 percent of the Southeast is suffering moderate to exceptional drought conditions, according to the most recent analysis by the Southeast Regional Climate Center.
– "This fire has the characteristics of western fires, of California fires," a North Carolina fire chief tells the Charlotte Observer as dozens of major wildfires blaze in the drought-ravaged South. "This is the worst I've ever seen." The Tennessee Division of Forestry is currently fighting 67 wildfires over about 16,000 acres. Fire officials say the largest active wildfire in the region has now burned more than 19,000 acres in the north Georgia mountains, an area larger than New York's Manhattan. All told, wildfires have burned more than 80,000 acres of forest and blanketed large areas of the south in dangerous haze. A section of the Appalachian Trail several miles long has been closed as a result of fires in Georgia and North Carolina, and NPR reports people are being evacuated in those states as well as Tennessee. With no sign of coming rain, the Tennessee Valley Authority has issued a burn ban on its public lands in seven states, the AP reports. The TVA on Tuesday said the ban applies to anything that might produce an open flame, from campfires to smoking cigarettes. It's even prohibited to park a car off-road where a hot tailpipe might light up dry grass or leaves. The rules apply across Tennessee and in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. Meanwhile, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has banned outdoor burning in more than half the state's counties through Dec. 15.