PSA: If you have had ANY contact with a bat or a bat has been in your house...
…if you have had ANY unprotected physical contact with a bat: You need to go get rabies shots or catch the bat (if you can safely do so) so it can be tested for rabies.
In the US bats are the most likely animal to give you rabies. A rabid bat will mindlessly bite anything it touches and their teeth are so small that many people will not notice the bites. Unless you have had a clear view of the bat the entire time and are 100000% sure it didn’t even nick you with its teeth then you should get the shots.
…if there is a bat in your house: If you did not see the bat enter and have not been observing it the entire time it was in your house you may have to go get rabies shots or catch the bat (again, only if you can do so without exposing yourself to further risk) so it can be tested.
This is especially true if you wake up and a bat is in your room (it could have bitten you while you were asleep) or if the bat has been in a room with a child or incapacitated adult (who may not be able to tell you they were bitten or notice it).
There was a tragic case of a boy who woke up with a bat in his room, shooed it out without touching it, and thought nothing of it. Later he died of rabies because the bat had bitten him in his sleep without him knowing.
RABIES IS INCURABLE ONCE YOU SHOW SYMPTOMS. If there is ever ANY question whether you may have been exposed to a rabid animal you need to go get the rabies vaccine IMMEDIATELY before the virus is able to spread inside your body.
The rabies vaccine is no longer painful stomach shots, it is now a series of normal shots in the arm over the course of several days. There is no reason to put this off if there is ANY chance you could have been exposed. Rabies is not something to mess around with. Once you show symptoms you are pretty much guaranteed an awful death within days.
Bringing this back because a kid in Florida recently died because his parents didn’t know this information and waited to take him to the hospital.
Bats are wonderful bug-eating friends and important parts of our ecosystems but they are not for touching. Stay safe!
Unfortunately bringing this post around again due to another tragic and entirely preventable rabies death in the US.
The man never even knew he had been bitten; at first everyone (doctor included) thought his stiff and achy neck was due to a pulled muscle until the worse symptoms started to show up. His wife said they would wake up with bats walking on their bed and that they regularly removed the bats from their home with their bare hands.
Always seek medical attention for any possible unprotected contact with a bat. Rabies is 99.99% fatal once you show symptoms. It is not worth the risk.
