As stated elsewhere on this thread, you suspect rabies any time a wild animal acts abnormally friendly. Especially nocturnal animals walking around in the day time. In early stages they don’t look different, but in later stages they may staffer, or may foam at the mouth. It doesn’t take much exposure to catch the disease, and it is almost always fatal unless treated immediately with a series of shots.
We had the case of a young girl here in Wisconsin exposed when she found a bat on the floor of her church at choir practice. She picked it up and carried it outside. In so doing, the bat scratched her; but she didn’t think anything about it. She fell sick several weeks later and was saved by a doctor with an experimental treatment. She lost a year of school and had to be retrained to walk and talk. She’s in college now (or has just graduated) and wants to become a vet. Unfortunately, the treatment that saved her is yet to be replicated in anyone else. The patients all died.
She is a miracle.
staffer=stagger