SALEM — Raccoons are typically nothing more than a nuisance when they prowl your backyard, or go through your garbage.

But one raccoon has attracted quite a bit of attention in two states, after a Salem woman brought the raccoon to a Fourth of July party in Maine last weekend, and it bit a young boy.

"Everybody that came in contact with the animal could have to undergo rabies shots, which is several thousand dollars for a series of shots," said Don Famico, Salem's animal control officer. "This could be an extensive proposition."

But Claudia Nikolopoulos, who found the baby raccoon by itself in late May, near a tree at her Belleau Road home, said she knows the young animal doesn't have rabies and the threat of large-scale rabies vaccination is a scare tactic.

"You can't get rabies by looking at (a raccoon)," Nikolopoulos said.

After finding the young raccoon, she put it in a box next to the tree. She figured something happened to its mother when she never came for the baby.

"I decided I would take care of it. I called everybody I knew," she said. "I didn't want to call anyone I knew (who) would kill the raccoon."

She researched rabies and said the raccoon, which was dehydrated and had a young, weak immune system when she found him, would never have lived for weeks if it did have the virus.

Rabies is a disease that affects all mammals and attacks the central nervous system. The virus is present in the saliva and can be transmitted by a bite from the affected animal or even via contact with the saliva.

Nikolopoulos and her family loved and cared for the wild animal for weeks and no one in her household has signs or symptoms of rabies. She even fed the raccoon milk from a bottle.

State animal health officials here and in Maine want to test the raccoon to make sure it's not rabid. But the only way to do that would be kill the animal and test its brain.

Nikolopoulos said she didn't want the raccoon killed for a poor decision she made: bringing the animal to a party. She said she was going to be gone for the entire Fourth of July and didn't want the raccoon to be on its own.

At the party, a boy went to grab the raccoon's food, but the raccoon bit him. Afterward, one of her family members told her to euthanize the raccoon, but she couldn't do it.

Nikolopoulos said the boy just finished his first series of rabies vaccinations and has shown no signs of the virus. But, on Monday, the epidemiologist from the Massachusetts Bureau of Animal Health contacted Famico to get the animal so it could be tested.

Famico said the family's poor decision was made long before the picnic; their error was bringing the wild animal home in the first place, which is against the law.

He said he's gotten different stories from Nikolopoulos about the raccoon's present whereabouts. He said she claimed she sent the raccoon to an animal rehabilitation facility but wouldn't say where.

Nikolopoulos said the facility wouldn't take the animal after the biting incident, out of liability concerns, so she decided to let it go into the wild early this week near her home.

Kate Plourd, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Environmental Police, said her department is aware of the incident, but the issue is being handled by the Salem Board of Health now.

Calls to the Board of Health yesterday were not returned by press time.