Danny Novo
The phrase, “nearly always fatal,” or words to that effect, appears in every description of rabies I have managed to find in the last twelve hours. Here is why I’m looking up rabies.
Late last night I was working in the basement, on the computer, as I usually do, and I heard behind me a thump, then another in rapid succession. I turned to look, and a bat swooped out of the darkness, took a right at the treadmill, and disappeared upstairs. It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened.
Ten minutes later, I’m edging down the hall, a laundry bag inside out on my winter-gloved hands, my wife is standing as far behind me as she can get while still training a flashlight on this poor little bat, wedged as tight as he can into a corner jamb by the door to the garage. In those ten intervening minutes I had managed to locate the bat, get a flashlight, wake my wife, we’d called the 24-hour pest removal place (which was closed), and I’d tried to capture it once already, using fireplace gloves so thick I couldn’t even feel if I had the bat or not.
The poor bat was clearly scared witless, throwing off musky scent and chittering for all he was worth when I had him in my hands. I’m sure he was biting at me. I couldn’t bring myself to kill him (I know, Denny, I know), so we stuck him in the bag out in the garage overnight. Better for me, I’m sure it was worse for him.
This morning we called everybody and their cousin. Our concern was for our kids. Bats carry rabies (especially bats that sit there and let you pick them up). There’s been mention lately in the media that children can be unaware of a bat bite, especially if they sleep soundly and are bitten in bed. So we called our pediatrician.
He offered that he had once had sixty-five bats in his house, and the best remedy had been a tennis racket. Then he suggested that, rather than start our two little boys on a course of treatment (five shots in 28 days), as he considers it highly unlikely that they were bitten, we should send the bat off to be tested for rabies. So we called our vet.
They offered to take the bat, freeze it, and send it off to Kansas State for said testing. So I drove our bagged bat, which was no longer making any noises (sorry, little guy), to our vet and gladly handed him off, if only because I could hand off the guilt, too. I’ve always been a softie for animals, and this bat was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I’m also a parent, and I will gladly murder cute little rodents to protect my family.
More when we get the results back.
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I think you can cross “nearly always fatal” off your list of things to be worried about; maybe it’s nearly always fatal when untreated, but treatment options have really improved in recent years.
An anecdote: my friend Rick lives in a nicely-restored historic home in Iowa City. One day after a shower (you should see his bathroom; it’s freaking amazing) he was upstairs wearing his bathrobe when he felt a strange fluttering.
He threw the robe off, and a bat flew out.
X days later (I forgot how many), he started coming down with flu-like symptoms. His partner, who is an MD, suggested that they research that. In fact, it had been approximately the incubation time for rabies. Rick went and got shots and is sassy and healthy.
Apparently the shot treatment is way better than it used to be. Previously, it was something like 8 shots to the navel, and now it’s just 3 to the arm or something.
Have heart! I believe you will survive!
But it sounds so much better when it is nearly always fatal. I know that treatment is nearly always effective (not the same ring, see?), and that there are only a handful of human rabies deaths a year in the U.S. I worry mostly for my boys, especially the older one, who cried bravely when he got his flu shot last month, but might not be able to withstand three more shots over three weeks.
Thank you for your encouragement. Maybe the poor little bat doesn’t (didn’t) have rabies.
Oh, this is rich. Leah is absolutely terrified of bats. The house I lived in on N. Linn down by Pagliai’s for 11 years had bats in it every fall when it started getting cool. My roommates and I used to see who could knock them back the farthest with my racquetball racket. We didn’t have any compunction about killing them; endangered status be damned!
Leah insists that if we ever find a bat in our house, we all need to undertake treatment immediately, regardless of whether there’s any evidence of a bite or even contact. I think this is ridiculous, but there’s no arguing with someone who “read about it on the Internet.”
I’m sure everyone there will be fine. And I encourage you to take up racquetball, or at least equip yourself as though you are.
I seem to have struck a nerve, mark. Have you had many discussions about this with Leah? You share our pediatrician’s opinion of wildlife in your castle, but I’m not sure the brown bat is endangered. Yet.
Y’all seem to be telling me it isn’t a big deal. And yet, I watch my lovely boys sleeping, and I can’t help but do all I can to keep them safe. Including zealous research on Google.
I guess my only point is that I lived with bats for a long time and never had one sneak into my bed and bite me (Leah’s fear). Of course that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t happen. You’re right, bats aren’t endangered here in Iowa (unless one of those darn Indiana bats comes around), but they are protected by state law.
The likelihood of a bat biting a non-threatening (i.e., sleeping) person is just about nil, I agree. A bat affected by rabies, however, won’t act like a normal bat, right? That said, our pediatrician thought it would be very unlikely that a sleeping person (his specialty being kids) would not notice a bat biting them.
Oh, great, now I have an image of Klaus Kinski in my head.…
Bleeding heart, foaming mouth. Did I ever tell you about the time my friend Natalie rescued a poor little kitten? Despite several weeks of TLC Natalie and her boyfriend Mark woke up one morning with a cat that was foaming at the mouth and shaking terribly. Of course this was after the cat had been handled by many people from both of their families including five or six small children.
So to make a long story short, they had to euthanize the cat and send it to Iowa State for testing. Another friend, Carrie, volunteered to transport it to Ames in a cooler. Of course it was over a holiday weekend, so Carrie had to shove the frozen, lifeless body into an overflowing intake freezer. Luckily, after a couple of days of worrying that both families would need rabies injections, the results came back negative. It was just distemper.
But I agree. Bats in the house are freaky. I wonder where my tennis racket is?
That sounds awful. Am I a bad person if I would sooner take a tennis racket to a cat, than a bat? I would probably do neither one, but still.
I feel like I should point out, in all fairness, that the bat’s lab tests have returned, and he was rabies-free. Poor thing.