Summary: A family in Montana had their cat bring home a dead bat. One of the parents decided it would be a good idea to keep the dead bat in a jar and take it to their kids’ school. One kid put her finger in the dead bat’s mouth to touch its teeth. The dead bat turned out to be rabid, and 74 people got rabies shots.
Well, thats a little better than the lady who served something like 12 folks a specially made mushroom dinner, out of which something like 11 ended up getting liver transplants IIRC.
But only marginally better I suppose.
As a fan of bats I should make two notes. Very few bats actually carry rabies for the simple fact it kills them rather quickly. BUTTTT, if you find a bat that you are able to easily catch, it is PROBABLY sick, with a much higher chance of rabid.
Random bat? Probably safe.
Random bat not behaving right or easily caught or on the ground? Not so much.
I’d include “dead bat brought home by your cat” in the “not so much” category. A rabid bat would presumably be easier for a cat to catch than a healthy bat, too.
My dog has found two dead bats. Thank Og for rabies shots (for dogs - we know better than to touch a bat bare-handed). It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t bother to get shots for their pets around here. We live in a semi-rural area and rabid wild animals are not uncommon. Why risk your pet’s life? It costs all of $5 to get a vax at the rabies clinics, which are held by the county every damn month.
But the vaccine might give your dog autism! It’s all a cover up by the pharmaceutical industry!
Jeeze, does nobody read Palahniuk anymore?
This:
Let’s see… only ONE person was deemed truly exposed, yet 73 others insisted on shots, too? A bit of overreaction, perhaps?
Well, understandably rabies is a scary thing, but why didn’t they think of that BEFORE they touched the dead bat?
So what do you do if your (vaccinated) cat does bring home a bat? Do the germs stick around in your cat’s mouth? Do you have to avoid love nips for the next few hours?
Obligatory Stephen King reference.
Vaccinated animals are supposed to be quarantined for 6 months and given prophylactic vaccines just in case they were exposed. Rabies is transmitted in saliva, nervous tissue and blood. If the cat is carrying the rabid bat, it could be carrying the virus in its mouth/saliva. Theoretically, the virus could then enter your bloodstream by the cat biting you without the cat ever really getting infected as it is vaccinated. In reality, the chances of that happening are probably very small.
The CDC says:
Many years ago my then mother in law (RIP) killed a bat with a broom that had the misfortune to fly through her open window one night. Then she flushed it down the toilet.
I’ve heard this scenario several times before. You think people would learn.
Especially since it wasn’t just the kids–a parent brought it in and took it around to 8 classrooms. The people who touched it included several teachers and school staff members. You’d think at least one of the adults (presumable college-educated since they were teachers) would have opined that it wasn’t a good idea.
That’s not to mention the kid who thought it was a good idea to put her fingers in the bat’s mouth to feel its teeth.
Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms start. So you need to start treatment very soon after exposure. If you wait until you show signs, you are going to die. And bats are a major resevoir of rabies, so are racoons.
You could even be exposed if you wake up and there is a bat in the room. Nasty way to die.
I thought most adults knew better than to handle bats because of the rabies risk. This should be memorable enough at that school it doesn’t occur for a while. Next sick kids from visiting a petting zoo, and touching their mouths before washing.
Thousands, if not 10 thousand cavers in the USA, make hundreds of thousands of visits to caves every year, most of these caves having a bat here or there, if not a bunch of them. Over the past few decades I am pretty sure NONE of them have developed rabies. If it aint none, its a damn small number.
You are about as likely to get HIV/Aids from walking down the street as you are getting rabies from being in proximity(even close) to a bat. Now, if the bat is acting strangely and /or you’ve handled it, or cant be sure it didnt bite you because you were asleep at the time, then precautions are warranted (and even then are more a just in case than a better do it).
Personally, I’d call the vet (or an emergency vet clinic) and go by what they said. I’d expect to be taking the cat to the vet soon, if not immediately. I’d try to bring the bat along to the vet as well, if possible.
1.) An overreation, but a not unsensible one, given that if you miss the window to get the shots, you’re dead.
2.) Presumably they didn’t know that bats are potential carriers for rabies.
Given how painful rabies shots are supposed to be, I’d say they’ve probably learned their lessons.
In our county, only unvaccinated animals are required to be quarantined for six months. Most people choose to have their unvaccinated pets put down instead - it’s expensive to quarantine. Which is one more reason why allowing your pets to go unvaccinated is so damn dumb. If your pet gets in a fight with a raccoon, for instance, and the raccoon runs away, there’s no way to know for sure whether the pet was actually exposed, so you could be putting a healthy animal down.
Vaccinated animals who have come in contact with a potentially rabid animal are required to get a booster shot within 72 hours of the exposure. They are also supposed to be observed for 10 days, which can be done at home.
In our location, if you have the animal your pet came in contact with, Animal Control will send it to the state lab for testing if it is one of the species known to be a rabies vector here (bats, raccoons, skunks and foxes). If there’s any chance of human exposure, you’ll get a call from a nurse from the CDC advising you on whether you should get prophylactic shots or not.
The broom flew through her window? Was there a witch attached to it?