When pain shot up her leg one morning last month, Donna Scafede thought a tree branch had fallen and hit her foot. Then she looked down and saw the raccoon that had been hiding under her car, and had just sunk its teeth into her.

"At 11 in the morning, that was not a good sign," said Ms. Scafede, 61, of Rostock Street in Pittsburgh's Spring Hill neighborhood.

Indeed, an examination of the raccoon done after a neighbor shot it showed it had full-blown rabies.

Rabies is a rarity among city animals. Its appearance on Rostock Street -- one of many half-abandoned city areas where the balance between man and nature is precarious -- has neighbors saying the city and Allegheny County should do more to notify residents and combat infestation.

The city or county "should put out more traps and monitor it," said Walter White, a bus driver who said that last winter he shot a raccoon that tore through his roof and took up residence in his Rostock Street attic. "I'm nervous now. I get out of the car and I'm looking around, extra cautious."

Ms. Scafede's Oct. 20 bite set her on a course of five injections that isn't over yet. It also set off a series of notifications that involved the city Animal Control Division, the county Health Department and two state agencies -- but not, officially, area residents. They got the news instead by word of mouth.

When city Councilwoman Darlene Harris heard about the incident, she contacted Pittsburgh officials to ask why no one was informing people living on and around Rostock Street.

"What I thought was that Animal Control went out and advised people," she said. "They said it was the Health Department" that handled that role.

The Health Department put out a Nov. 2 public service announcement about an Oct. 28 incident in which a 46-year-old Shaler woman was bitten by a raccoon that she was feeding. That raccoon was not caught, and the woman was treated for rabies as a precaution.

A search of the Health Department Web site reveals no announcement of Ms. Scafede's rabies exposure. Department officials were off for Veterans Day yesterday and could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Scafede paid city Animal Control the required $40 deposit for a nonlethal trap. She has captured two raccoons since, and turned them over to Animal Control.

There seem to be more.

Mary Musher, who lives at the top of Rostock's lone block, said that over the weekend her dog Eddie, a Shih Tzu, was "carrying on" shortly after 5 p.m. When she looked out the front door, she saw a raccoon "hunched over" in the street, and then it "just slowly walked up the hill."

She said she had seen two raccoons scoot from behind a city-owned, empty house on the street a few weeks ago.

"I have no idea what they could do about it," she said.

Ms. Harris said a first step is to beef up Animal Control and shift it from the Public Works Department to the Public Safety Department. The city's animal control officers handle dangerous situations and write citations, she said, so they should be linked organizationally to police, firefighters, paramedics and building inspectors.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration is considering the move. The mayor will introduce his budget to City Council today, and Ms. Harris said she may use the ensuing amendment process to try to enhance Animal Control.

"Right now, with the way Animal Control is, it seems we don't have much prevention," said Ms. Harris, who added that she kept a pet raccoon as a child.

That's not advisable, of course. The Health Department, which put bait laced with anti-rabies vaccines throughout the county in July, reported in its Nov. 2 release that of nine rabid animals captured this year, eight were raccoons.

That represents a drop from 32 rabid animals in 2002, but a rise from seven last year.

Typically, very few of the cases come from the city.

"Amanda Loar, our head vet tech, has seen just three confirmed rabies cases in raccoons in her seven years here, and all of them were in the Riverview Park area on the North Side," said Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania spokesman Dan Musher, who is not related to resident Mary Musher. City Animal Control takes captured wildlife to the league's Larimer shelter, where species that can carry rabies are euthanized by city workers.

Some Rostock residents want the city to set traps across the hillsides.

Traps, though, won't likely ensnare rabid raccoons, said Jill Argall, director of the league's Wildlife Center.

"The rabid raccoons are out of it," she said. "They're not doing things that normal raccoons do."

The number of raccoons in the city may be up this year.

Through Oct. 31, the league had already received 1,863 wild animals from the city -- around half of them raccoons -- which is up from the 1,667 animals they typically get in an entire year.

"It would be nice if the city can get rid of them," said Charles Tatton, a retiree who lives on Rostock and owns several vacant properties there, including one that he said was "ripped up" by invading raccoons years ago.

Because of prompt treatment, no Pennsylvanian has come down with rabies since 1984. Ms. Scafede is feeling no ill effects -- except the creeps when she comes out her front door.

"Now I do not get into the car," she said, "without using a flashlight to look under it."