I also considered ‘Batsgiving!’ For a title but I figured that would not be factual enough
So, late Wednesday night, T-Day Eve, I was up in my office area when a bat suddenly started flying around in wild circles, including, freakin’ right by my head. One overturned wastebasket and album cover slid underneath later, I had it trapped and tossed outside.
My office is in a loft area above our attached garage, and our attic adjoins my office on the same level, with a little door in my office to get into the attic. So it made sense to think it came from the attic, and there may be an infestation of them in there.
I just did an inspection of the attic and I see no signs of bats. The obvious place I would expect to see them is hanging from the highest peak in the center. No bats, no sign of guano that I could see. I also shined a flashlight into the area where the roof slopes down to the eaves, and didn’t see any sign of them. We use the attic for storage and there’s a lot of junk where pests could be hiding. I mean, if I was looking for mice or other critters that don’t fly I’d need to take all the junk out of the attic to do a thorough inspection, but I don’t think bats will ‘hide out’ like that, they’d be hanging from the rafters, wouldn’t they?
Make an audio recording of the place you suspect your bats are. Around the time the sun sets should be good. Play the recording at half speed, you should be able to hear the sounds they make to echolocate. If they are there.
At this time of year they should usually be hybernating around where I live. I suspect your bat was in a warm place and therefore not hybernating yet. That should change soon if there is a winter where you live.
You are in the US, right? Check those:
I’m guessing you don’t live in an old church so there’s a lot of room where the pews used to be, which means you probably don’t have a belfry for the bats to non-meaphorically come from.
Bats don’t dangle down from the rafters like in the cartoons, a lot of times they are curled up and wrapped up on a wall. Imagine a computer mouse, only about two inches long and furry. If you aren’t looking for it, easy to miss.
True story. Middle of the night, middle of a midwestern winter. I wake up hearing the cat fighting with something. I hear wings flapping. Damn, that’s a big bug the cat found. Wait a minute - it’s winter. No bugs. “Hey, Mrs., I think there’s a bat in out room!”. “A WHAT?!?!?”. Fhoom! Blankets over the head. I turn the lights on, and the bat is doing laps around the room. I’m leaving out some fun stuff, but leave the room to get a small fishing net to catch the bat. Come back in, and the bat flies behind a 7-foot tall bookcase. Ok, i need the bat flying so I can catch it, so I nudge the bookcase. crunch!. Shit. So now it’s the middle of the night, and I’m emptying the bookcase because you don’t move a 7 foot tall bookcase when it is full, and i didn’t want to leave a bat corpse in the room.
Wikipedia says bats echolocate using frequencies between 14 kHz and 100 kHz. Halving the low end of those frequencies will bring them into the range of human hearing, but halving frequencies above about 30-40 kHz will still be inaudible. However I’m dubious about whether most standard recording technology will even record frequencies above 20 kHz.
I have a Magenta bat detector (this one), a hand-held device that shifts such high frequencies into a range where it can be heard. I bought it to be able to hear the vocalizations made by my pet rats. It’s probably too expensive for a one-time use by the OP though. (For some weird and slightly amusing reason, searching for “bat detector” on Amazon returns a bunch of so-called “EMF detectors” and “ghost detectors”.)
My son had a bat in his room earlier this year. It suddenly disappeared, we assumed up the chimney, but one night later he realized it had been in his recycle bin the whole time. I took the bin outside, went back to bed, then got up again thinking that bat probably couldn’t take off vertically in that narrow space…put the bin sideways on top of one of our large waste bins so it hung over space, and the bat was gone in the morning.
You should get shots. Numerous people who’ve gotten rabies from infected bats had no recollection of getting bitten or scratched. The teeth/claws are so sharp, you may not feel it. There’s no down side to getting the shots, but a big downside to NOT getting the shots. And since you didn’t save the bat after you captured it, you have no way of knowing.
Yes, I live in a cold area (southeast Michigan in the U.S.) but it had been a bit unseasonably warm (temps routinely above freezing) up until a couple days ago.
Yes, I realize an attic is not exactly a belfry. I was being a little cute with my title.
So bats don’t always hang upside down from rafters? I don’t think it’s just cartoons where they do that- I’ve been to bat houses where they are quite literally hanging down from the ceiling. But it’s good to know that they don’t necessarily always do that, and that is what I’m trying to determine- whether I searched our attic thoroughly enough or not.
Ugh, I hadn’t even considered that I might have been exposed. I never had direct contact with the bat. No visible bite marks anywhere. We have millions of bats around here. We watch them swooping around outside at night. I’ve found a bat in our shed before. I feel like if I ran to the doc every time I got close to a bat I’d need to get a frequent flyer bat vaccine card (after 9 vaxes, the 10th is free!).
But…now I’ve been googling rabies and vaccines. My father, who had extreme OCD, was terrified of getting rabies. He refused to eat tomatoes my mom grew in her garden, in case they were licked by rabid raccoons. If he had seen a bat in the house he’d be running to the doc, despite the fact he was afraid of doctors too.
I don’t know, I feel like my overall risk of exposure is very low, but I understand there’s a very extreme risk/reward ratio going on here. Any more opinions on the matter? I know many of you Dopers live in more rural, wild or out of the way places and surely encounter your share of bats and other critters on a regular basis. How much should I be concerned with getting vaxxed?
@Dr.Winston_OBoogie: is that an old story, or current? If current, or for anyone finding their cat (or dog, or other mammal) with a bat: the cat needs a booster ASAP. And keep their inoculations up to date, indoor cat or not; because if the rabies isn’t the poor cat needs months in an isolation cage at the vet’s.
No, i vacation in an island where we used to have a lot of bats. I’m jealous that you still have them, ours were nearly totally wiped out by white nose fungus.
They mostly slept behind pictures or otherwise out-of-the-way. We knew they were there by the guano underneath. Also, sometimes in the evening we’d see them emerge. I wouldn’t look for bats, I’d look for guano around the edges of the place.
Also, if there’s space between the inner and outer parts of the wall, that’s a perfect space for a bat, and you wouldn’t see the guano.
I’d hire a pest control specialist to seal any holes while the bats are out. And I’d set out bat houses, but that’s because i like bats.
I suspect this is a “better safe than sorry” situation.
Perhaps our good friend @Qadgop_the_Mercotan can offer his usual sage advice here. IIRC he both lives in a rural locus and has had to deal with chiropteran home invaders.
Good call— I will be interested to hear Qadgop’s take if he wants to weigh in. I feel like the whole ordeal of getting 6 or so shots over several days is an overreaction to having a bat flying around my office that I caught and released without any contact. But I also realize that despite the fact the odds of contracting rabies are very low, the consequence in the tiny chance I did get exposed is certain death if I don’t get vaxxed.
I also understand that nobody here wants to say “eh, I wouldn’t worry about it” and then 6 months or so later read a post from my wife saying “solost passed away from rabies”. So it’s easy to say “better safe than sorry”.
Speaking of my wife, she had been in the attic earlier in the day that the bat appeared, getting out Christmas stuff. I let her know everything I now know for full disclosure, since she could potentially have been exposed as well. She is not concerned with it at all.
A lot may depend upon where you live. I live in Oregon where up to 10% of tested bats are rabid. Bats are the main resevoir of rabies here. That is just the ones turned in for testing. The little brown bats here are communal and live together in close proximity, so it can ge assumed that the rest of the untested bats have also been exposed.
I don’t think you have to do the whole 6 shots thing now, more of a prophylacic shot unless you are sure of a bite of some kind. Many people have these shots when going to places where they may be exposed to rabies, like India.
If you have had a bat in the same room, you have been exposed. Rabies is not just always fatal, it is also a very horrible way to die. The best they can do for you is put you into a medical coma so yout don’t experience it.
Personal anecdote; I live in an old Craftsman style house and had a hole in the roof, a bat found its way in. I kept hearing a clicking noise and discoverd a bat in a glue trap I put out for mice. I did not go get any shots, but I did worry about it for some time.
One of the latest Oregon cases was a young boy that found and handled a sick bat. Pled with his dad not to get shots, Dad relented and of course the boy died a horrible death.
My son recently did a long series of shots because there was a bat in his house. It wasn’t just one shot. And the first shot was so much volume that it was very painful.
When I vacationed on an island covered with bats, and had bars roosting in the room i slept in, i never worried about it. The bats behaved like normal, healthy bats, and i don’t believe anyone was ever bitten by one. (And even if you sometimes don’t notice, surely you sometimes do notice?) But I’m not going to say, “don’t get the shots”, because yes, rabies is horrible and incurable.
Also, are you really really sure it didn’t touch you?
That’s not true. For public health purposes, they assume that if you were in the same room, you were exposed. But unless you came into contact with its saliva (or blood) you weren’t actually exposed.
Rabies virus is transmitted through direct contact (e.g., through broken skin or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth) with saliva, tears and lacrimal secretions, or brain/nervous system tissue from an infected animal or person10. Bite and non-bite (e.g., cerebrospinal fluid, brain tissue) occupational exposures from an infected person could theoretically transmit rabies to HCP, but no such cases have been confirmed. Casual contact, such as touching a person with rabies or contact with non-infectious fluid or tissue (e.g., urine, blood, feces), is not associated with a risk for infection. Rabies virus is not transmitted through contaminated objects or materials such as clothes or bedding11.
It usually spreads through direct contact with saliva from an infected animal, such as through a bite or less commonly through a scratch. Even very tiny bites or scratches, such as from bats, which can be difficult to see, can transmit the virus.
In rare circumstances, you can get rabies if:
a rabid animal licks:
an open cut, scratch, sore, rash or other wound
your mucous membranes (such as your eyes, nose or mouth)
you have direct contact with an infected animal’s brain or nervous system tissue or fluids
Rabies does not spread through:
petting a rabid animal
contact with a rabid animal’s blood, urine or feces
…
In very rare circumstances, rabies could be transmitted through:
airborne spread after exposure in a laboratory
airborne spread in caves where infected bats roost
The problem with bats is that they can transmit rabies without showing any symptoms (see point 1.2 if the link does not lead you there right away: Why Bats? The Vector Connection):
The CDC had this to say about who needs post-rabies prophylaxis based on types of exposure (and this was their recommendation BEFORE RFK the lesser took over):
post-exposure prophylaxis should be administered in the following settings:
•To all individuals who have had a bite, scratch, or mucous membrane exposure from a bat.
•When direct contact with a bat occurred and the individual is unable to rule out a bite or scratch.
•If an individual has been in a room with a bat and is unable to rule out any physical contact. Such individuals include a sleeping person who awakens to find a bat in the room, an unattended child, a mentally disabled person, and an intoxicated person. This approach is consistent with the recommendations of the ACIP for rabies post-exposure prophylaxis
●Post-exposure prophylaxis is not necessary if the person was aware of the bat at all times while in an enclosed or open space and is certain that there was no bite, scratch, or mucous membrane exposure. Household members who were not in a room with the bat do not require post-exposure prophylaxis.
The state I live in (Wisconsin) has dozens to hundreds of such bat encounters as I just had every day. It’s very rare to give rabies vaccine in such cases, and far, far rarer for a case of rabies to appear in the state. The last four cases of human rabies in Wisconsin occurred in 1959, 2000, 2004, and 2010.
And here are a few of my past experiences personally and professionally dealing with potential rabies situations:
