Twenty-three shots in the stomach. That’s what a diagnosis of rabies exposure meant back in the 1950s. Medicine has advanced to the point where it’s now more like five or seven in areas more typically vaccinated – such as your arm.
But it’s still not exactly pleasant. The treatment is one very good reason for taking note of the recent apparent uptick in rabid bat finds in the Denver metro area and reviewing the practical protections against this rare but deadly disease.
Infected bats are an annual Colorado problem that emerges as the animals come out of winter hibernation. This year seems to be on track to be worse than last year.
Health department officials already have found 17 rabid bats in the Denver metro area – the same number as found in the same area for all of 2005.
Gayle Miller, a Jefferson County health department epidemiologist, said it could simply mean more bats are being tested, but she urged caution nonetheless.
Other animals that can carry the disease are raccoons, foxes, skunks and stray dogs. But rabies has long been recognized as a health risk in Colorado because of the frequency of human-bat interaction, according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Typically, people are exposed when they pick up grounded bats or try to remove them from homes or pets’ mouths.
Experts say if you find a bat in your house and there is any chance – no matter how small – that it may have been in contact with a person or a pet, you’ll need to safely capture the bat and take it to animal control or health department for testing.
That could be the bat behind the bedroom chest of drawers or hanging on the living room curtains. Bat bites are not the stuff of horror movies from a different era. Colorado’s brown bats, those most frequently found in these situations, have tiny teeth that do not leave distinct punctures. And there have been cases of people contracting rabies and dying after having slept in a room with a rabid bat, never knowing they had contact with the animal.
The other important step Coloradans can take is making certain to keep pets’ rabies vaccinations up to date, even for indoor cats. If a rabid bat gets in the house, and an unvaccinated curious cat tangles with it, the best outcome is a lengthy quarantine for the cat.
Rabies is a horrible, fatal disease that thankfully is quite rare. Taking some simple steps to deal with potentially rabid bats could save you from those shots, too.
