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bat tales part ii: this time it's viral
Jun. 26th, 2003 10:09 amLast night I got home from work and spent a glamorous twenty minutes or so precariously balancing myself on one foot on a dinner chair, a swiffer mop thingy in my hand, scrubbing bat blood off of the ceiling in the living room. It was like some warped Swiffer commercial.
Post blood-scrubbing, we surveyed our handiwork, felt proud, and then received a phone call from my grandmother asking us whether we'd called the health department to get rabies shots. And then my mother and I stared at our Swiffery-smelling blood-scrubbing hands in horror and waited to start foaming at the mouth.
Dude! Rabies! Are you guys aware what critters are the most common carriers of rabies to humans? BATS. Grrr!!! We might have to go get SHOTS even though none of us remembers being bitten. And then we decided to go to the Centers for Disease Control website, which has this heartwarming, soothing story to ease our fears:
In February 1995, the aunt of a 4-year-old girl was awakened by the sounds of a bat in the room where the child was sleeping. The child did not wake up until the bat was captured, killed, and discarded. The girl reported no bite, and no evidence of a bite wound was found when she was examined. One month later the child became sick and died of rabies. The dead bat was recovered from the yard and tested--it had rabies.
My mother, brother, and I read this at the same time and gaped at each other in open-mouthed horror afterward. And *then* we read this:
The bat was behaving abnormally. Instead of hiding, the bat was making unusual noises and was having difficulty flying. This strange behavior should have led to a strong suspicion of rabies.
And then we were all, "Phew! Okay! It's not like the bat was flying around during the daytime, confused, smashing into walls and going right at people -- oh wait that's exactly what he did."
Grr!! Now my mother's calling places trying to figure out what to do. I don't want to get shots! I don't! I mean, I don't think I have rabies. None of us remembers getting bitten and seriously, the odds the bat was rabid? And I have not been foaming at the mouth or behaving abnormally! I mean, there was the five minutes or so last night during which my brother and I did our best impression of foaming-at-the-mouth rabid humans, chomping at the air by each other's and our mother's shoulders, but come on! That's just general family wackiness, not an "infectious viral disease that affects the central nervous system"!
Whatev. We will have to get shots, or we will not have to get shots. I leave it in the hands of my physician, Animal Control, and God.
Post blood-scrubbing, we surveyed our handiwork, felt proud, and then received a phone call from my grandmother asking us whether we'd called the health department to get rabies shots. And then my mother and I stared at our Swiffery-smelling blood-scrubbing hands in horror and waited to start foaming at the mouth.
Dude! Rabies! Are you guys aware what critters are the most common carriers of rabies to humans? BATS. Grrr!!! We might have to go get SHOTS even though none of us remembers being bitten. And then we decided to go to the Centers for Disease Control website, which has this heartwarming, soothing story to ease our fears:
In February 1995, the aunt of a 4-year-old girl was awakened by the sounds of a bat in the room where the child was sleeping. The child did not wake up until the bat was captured, killed, and discarded. The girl reported no bite, and no evidence of a bite wound was found when she was examined. One month later the child became sick and died of rabies. The dead bat was recovered from the yard and tested--it had rabies.
My mother, brother, and I read this at the same time and gaped at each other in open-mouthed horror afterward. And *then* we read this:
The bat was behaving abnormally. Instead of hiding, the bat was making unusual noises and was having difficulty flying. This strange behavior should have led to a strong suspicion of rabies.
And then we were all, "Phew! Okay! It's not like the bat was flying around during the daytime, confused, smashing into walls and going right at people -- oh wait that's exactly what he did."
Grr!! Now my mother's calling places trying to figure out what to do. I don't want to get shots! I don't! I mean, I don't think I have rabies. None of us remembers getting bitten and seriously, the odds the bat was rabid? And I have not been foaming at the mouth or behaving abnormally! I mean, there was the five minutes or so last night during which my brother and I did our best impression of foaming-at-the-mouth rabid humans, chomping at the air by each other's and our mother's shoulders, but come on! That's just general family wackiness, not an "infectious viral disease that affects the central nervous system"!
Whatev. We will have to get shots, or we will not have to get shots. I leave it in the hands of my physician, Animal Control, and God.
