A fox captured near East Sessom Drive and Pleasant Street on the Texas State University campus has tested positive for rabies, San Marcos city officials announced, though they say no known exposures to people or pets have been reported. Maintenance workers caught the animal Wednesday and turned it over to San Marcos Animal Control, which confirmed the positive test.
The discovery, reported by KSAT, lands in one of the busiest pedestrian corridors near campus. City officials are urging students, residents and pet owners to take precautions, noting that rabies spreads most commonly through the bite or scratch of an infected animal and remains a deadly virus once symptoms begin. Anyone who believes they had physical contact with the fox or another potentially rabid animal should seek post-exposure treatment immediately, since the treatment must begin promptly to be effective.
This is not the first time a rabid fox has turned up close to campus. In March, a rabid fox attacked a resident in the 1400 block of Highland Drive — about half a mile north of Texas State — and exposed a neighborhood dog that was later treated, according to the San Antonio Express-News. That same report cited Animal Services Manager Christie Banduch, who said the defining anomaly in San Marcos wasn't the raw case count but a higher-than-typical frequency of unprovoked fox attacks on humans across the city and Hays County. Between March 2025 and March 2026, the city recorded 12 confirmed animal rabies cases within its limits, including bats and skunks alongside the fox incidents.
A Pattern Stretching Across Neighborhoods
The Highland Drive attack wasn't isolated, either. On July 11, 2026, the City of San Marcos reported that animal services had captured a rabid fox in the Willow Creek Estates neighborhood after it attacked a short-haired stray cat, which then fled into a nearby greenbelt and was never located. Before the campus case surfaced, residents in the same Willow Creek area told KXAN they were on edge after multiple fox attacks, prompting Hays County officials and the Texas Department of State Health Services to confirm at least three recent incidents and consider heightened surveillance and control measures.
County leadership has been tracking the problem for close to a year. Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra issued a public health warning in January about a wildlife rabies outbreak centered on foxes, a warning Hoodline covered at the time alongside free vaccination clinics organized by the PALS Clinic in San Marcos. Those clinics aimed to raise pet vaccination rates in a county where the fox-driven outbreak was already drawing attention.
How San Marcos Fits the Statewide Picture
Statewide, rabies cases have been reported in foxes, bats and skunks. In 2026, Texas surveillance data recorded 20 fox rabies cases, 90 bat cases and 87 skunk cases.
Rabies Vaccination for Pets
Pet owners should make sure their dogs and cats are vaccinated against rabies.
City officials are again urging people not to touch wild animals, especially ones that appear sick or are behaving unusually. Anyone with suspected contact with a wild animal is asked to report it to San Marcos Animal Services at 512-805-2655, and the city has posted resources for low-cost pet rabies vaccinations on its website. Whether greenbelt wildlife corridors near campus are helping drive foxes toward heavily trafficked areas like East Sessom Drive remains an open question, as does whether any additional low-cost vaccination clinics will be scheduled in response to the latest case.
