This rabies vaccine article by Maura Lerner in the Strib today hit close to home - I’ll elaborate below…

photo by Jeff Wheeler -Star Tribune

Peter took our dog, Chloe, for a walk Sunday night around dusk. He came back saying what a great night it was and there were so many bats out swooping overhead eating mosquitos.  I will quote him “I really think bats are my favorite creature. They are so cool.”

Some call this foreshadowing…

2:22 am
Chloe is agitated. She gets up from under our bed and walks out into the hallway. Peter gets up follows her to see what’s going on.  I’m still half asleep and hear Vivian kicking and rustling in her bassinet near our bed.  I hear a crinkly fluttery rattle and wonder if she has her Very Hungry Caterpillar butterfly toy in there. Hmmm…It’s kind of an electric vibrating noise, maybe it’s her bee toy - that makes that sound too when you pull on it.
I hear Peter get a glass of water in the kitchen. Chloe hustles back under the bed. Then Peter comes back and sees a shadow circling and flying around our bedroom and exclaims ” Kay - I think there’s a bird in here! ”

Nope.

He turned the light on and a bat was peering at him from under the doorway and then flew right over him in the hallway. Definitely shriek-worthy. He shuts the door so it won’t fly back in our room. What I heard next sent me into fits of giggles. I wish I had audio of the whole encounter - typing just doesn’t do it justice.

It went something like this. Unsettling quiet. Flap flap flap - waaaaah! Unsettling quiet. Flap flap flap - eeeeeyahhhh! Unsettling quiet. Flap flap flap -woahhhh! Unsettling quiet. “I’m getting my tennis racket.” (not sure if he was telling me, or the bat. But whenever there’s a bat in the house it seems a tennis racket is needed. To protect and to serve.. as a shield). unsettling quiet Flap flap flap -eeeeeyahhhh! Unsettling quiet. Unsettling quiet. Unsettling quiet. Then I hear the screen door slide shut - phew.

Apparently during this extended unsettling quiet time Mr. Bat was creepily wobbly-walking around the parameter of our family room disappearing under furniture and reappearing. Peter was at the ready to slide open the door when he came by. It worked. Bye bye Mr. Bat. (now we know freeing it was a big mistake - but at the time - getting it out of the house was the goal).

I was still groggy and giddy with laughter from the ordeal. But then I sat straight up in bed with a moment of realization. AAGH! that was NOT Vivi’s toy I heard - that was the BAT!!! The room was dark so I don’t know if it had been under, behind or actually IN her bassinet. All I could think of was…

Disease! Rabies! Fleas! Guana! And this creature flapping around near my sweet baby! Agh!

She slept through the whole thing. Peter and I examined every inch of her. Surely she would have cried if it had bitten or scratched her. Right? Of course my mind immediately goes to the tragic story last year of the man who died from rabies after being unknowingly bitten by a bat.  I know that case was extremely rare. Incredibly rare. But it happened.

She’s fine. We’re fine.  Right? Right? We will be.

So the incident that originally sent me into fits of laughter, just plain sent me into fits. The internet can scare you with too many facts so I called the MN Department of Health. They took the matter very seriously. Not funny at all.

Quote from their web site.

Bats: In recent years, most cases of human rabies in the U.S. have been due to bat bites that were not recognized or reported. Bat bites are a special problem because the tiny teeth marks are difficult to see, and the bite may not be noticed. If there is any chance that physical contact with a bat occurred, the bat should be captured and tested for rabies. These situations include not only bat bites, but also finding a bat in the room of a previously unattended child, or waking up to find a bat in the room. If the bat cannot be tested, PEP should be initiated.

Excerpt from the Strib article about the Monticello man: “We have some special rules for bats,” said Sheftel, who specializes in zoonotic diseases. “The biggest one is that if you wake up and there’s a bat in your room, we want you to catch the bat and we will test it for rabies. There’s no charge for testing at the state.”The person trying to catch the bat should use thick gloves and a hard container. Bats can bite through sacks and pillowclothes.”If the bat escapes, or you inadvertently let it out,” she said, “then we consider that an exposure and we would recommend rabies [treatment] post-exposure.”

I wrung my hands about this decision. Peter and I would be fine with the shots, but what about Vivian?  (btw: these are not painful shots in the stomach like many of us heard from our childhood days). 

I asked myself over and over am I panicking? Over-reacting? I know the chances that the bat was rabid are miniscule, that any of us were even bit or scratched were miniscule. But we were considered “exposed” and we did not have the bat to bring in for testing.

A few shots are definately worth the alternative.

So we started our course of shots yesterday. We will go in several more times until our rounds are done. The rabies bunch.

Peter hasn’t taken back his original words. Bat’s are still one of his favorites, just not when they are in the house.

More information can be found at the:

MN Department of Health web site here.

Sidenote: The shots we are getting are not the restricted ones mentioned in today’s article. Those are pre-preventative and ours are post.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.