Well, rabies wasn’t on my 2026 Bingo card and now I’m foaming at the mouth

It’s been quite a year — missiles, terror, Jew hatred all over the world, extremist attacks against Christians and Muslims in Israel, hantavirus, perpetual and exhausting war, Roger, Greta, Tucker, looming elections, chocolate hummus, apocalypse… It’s A LOT, but I’ve rolled with it… but you know what WASN’T on my bingo card for 2026?

Rabies.

Yes. Rabies.

As in Ol’ Yeller and that crazy blonde patient from Scrubs.

There was a confirmed rabies case near my house this week.

Just one poor dog who lived around the corner.

And because I am a calm, rational adult woman living in Israel in 2026, I reacted with the measured restraint for which I am known.

I lost my entire mind.

Within minutes I was sending frantic WhatsApp messages in ALL CAPS.

DID ANYONE SEE THE DOG?
WHAT COLOR WAS IT?
WHERE EXACTLY WAS IT AT 7:32 A.M. ON TUESDAY?
COULD IT HAVE PASSED BY MY HOUSE?
COULD IT HAVE LOOKED AT MY HOUSE?
COULD IT HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT MY HOUSE?

Soon I was deep in Google.

By midnight I had become an amateur epidemiologist.

By one in the morning I was reading veterinary journals.

By two I was studying transmission pathways.

By three I was examining case studies from countries I have never visited involving animals I have never encountered.

By four I was howling at the moon.

I have never worked this hard on anything I was actually paid to do.

At some point I called the health authorities.
I would like to apologize to the woman who answered the phone.

She had clearly expected to speak with someone who had encountered a rabid animal.
Instead she got me.

“Hello,” I began. “Hypothetically speaking, if I saw a photograph of the dog, would that help determine whether I need rabies shots?”

Silence.

“Because I didn’t actually see the dog.”

More silence.
“I just know it existed. Plus I’ve been tired lately.”

At this point I could hear her reevaluating every life choice that had led her to public service.
But the thing is, the dog wasn’t really the problem.

The dog was just the latest vessel for all the anxiety already sloshing around inside me to go.

Because here’s the thing about living in Israel.
Everyone is already low key rabid.

Spiritually.
Emotionally.
Politically.
Collectively.

We wake up every morning and immediately begin foaming at the mouth over something.

The government.
The opposition.
The judiciary.
The media.
The other media.
The people protesting.
The people not protesting.
The people protesting incorrectly.
The people who are angry.
The people who aren’t angry enough.
The people who think the country is ending.
The people who think everything is fine.
The people who think everything would be fine if everyone simply agreed with them.

We snap.
We bark.
We chase one another in circles.
We stare wild-eyed at our phones waiting for the next alert.

We doomscroll.
We catastrophize.

We convince ourselves that if we just read one more article, listen to one more podcast, refresh one more feed, certainty will finally appear.

It never does.
So we keep scrolling.
And foaming.
And howling.

The truth is that for nearly three years now, we’ve all been living with our nervous systems plugged directly into a wall socket.

Sirens.
Wars.
Hostages.
Politics.
Economic pressure.
Children.
Parents.
Reservists.
Funerals.
Elections.
Investigations.
Coalitions collapsing.
Coalitions surviving.
People screaming on television.
People screaming on Facebook.
People screaming in Knesset committees.
People (ok, me) screaming in WhatsApp groups.

Just screaming, generally.

The rabid dog was almost… refreshing?
At least it was an actual thing.
A tangible problem we could solve.
A creature with fur and teeth and a laboratory-confirmed diagnosis.
Compared to everything else, it felt strangely manageable.

Finally, something I could research.
Finally, a danger with a protocol.
Finally, a crisis that came with an emergency hotline.

Because what do you do with the bigger stuff?
How do you vaccinate yourself against uncertainty?

Against grief?

Against fear?

Against the constant sense that the ground beneath your feet is shifting while everyone argues about whose fault it is?

You literally cannot.

So instead I found myself obsessively constructing timelines about a dog.

A dog I never saw.
A dog that almost certainly never came anywhere near me.
A dog that became the furry avatar of every other thing I could not control.
By the third day I realized something.
I wasn’t afraid of rabies.

I was tired.

Tired of carrying this weight.
Tired of worrying.
Tired of calculating risks.
Tired of wondering what fresh madness would arrive in tomorrow’s headlines.

The dog was just where all of that landed.
A convenient hook on which to hang a much larger fear.

And perhaps that is the real disease of our age.

Not rabies.

The inability to stop searching.

The conviction that if we gather enough information, enough screenshots, enough news alerts, enough opinions, enough expert commentary, we can somehow achieve certainty.

But certainty never comes.
Only another notification.
Another update.
Another thing to worry about.

The health official, meanwhile, remained remarkably calm throughout our conversation.
“No,” she said with a sigh, for perhaps the seventeenth time. “You do not need rabies shots because there was a dog somewhere in the general vicinity of your house Jerusalem.”

And that’s when I realized something else.
Maybe the antidote was never information.
Maybe the antidote is knowing when to close the browser.

To put down the phone.

To stop feeding every fear until it grows teeth.

The dog was rabid.

The rest of us are just exhausted and a little unhinged.

Though admittedly, from a distance, it can be difficult to tell the difference.