The bats own my house; I just pay the mortgage.

I’m not totally kidding. Right now, I live in the middle of a bat colony, which seems to have established itself in my attic. I’m not totally kidding about that, either; the Public Health Department considers my house a bat colony. Over the past several years, I have found about 14 bats in the house, having taken several to Public Health to be tested. They’re tired of me — Public Health, that is. (I don’t know about the bats). They have declared my bat colony free of rabies, however.

The number of bats that I’ve had to deal with over the years has actually resulted in reducing my fear of rabies in a real-world example of systematic desensitization. Be in the same house with a bat and not get bit? Check. Live with a bat-hunting cat? Keep them in quarantine and then give them a vaccination. Check. Almost step on a dead bat in the living room? Check. Pick up the dead bat with heavy gloves? Check. Worst case scenario? Get the rabies shots. Hasn’t happened yet.

I’m not crazy enough to adopt a bat as a pet, because they’re cute but they carry rabies, which means my attic colony is not without risk. And I want the colony out of there, which will happen soon while we repair the soffits on the old house that allowed this.

Bye bye bats.

About the Bat …

I’m writing again. Mostly because office hours (my last for the school year) are very quiet. My day, on the other hand …

Last night, I was sitting on the couch when I heard a chittering. I thought, “No big deal; my cat is hunting.” I looked over at her and she had a very angry bat in her mouth. I love bats; I think they’re the most darling creatures on earth. But I’m terrified of rabies. Chloe (the cat; I didn’t name the bat) dropped the tsking creature on the carpet and looks at me expectantly. The bat flies away, and flies a few laps of the upstairs and downstairs. Chloe streaked after it.

I found the trusty pair of leather bat-handling gloves and trudged upstairs. I found Chloe in the bathroom with the bat in her mouth, and the bat was once again screeching. She once again dropped it on the floor and before the bat could take off again, I inverted a shoebox-sized tub over it. (If you’re wondering why we conveniently placed a shoebox-sized tub by the bathroom, we’ve been meaning to put it away.)

I was now in possession of one mad bat who was not long for this world. Given that this bat had been in the mouth of my unvaccinated kitty, I wanted to get the bat checked for rabies. However, the County Health Department has advised me not to bring them any more dead bats because of the sheer number of bats that have come from our house. We apparently have a colony in our chimney and occasionally one breaks into the inside of the house. So I grab our standard bat-keeping gear, an empty tub of Coffeemate creamer, and shove the bat inside it, closing the lid tightly. The bat should suffocate by morning.

This morning, I call the vet to find out if my cat Chloe has current rabies vaccination and find out that hers expired in 2022. I tell them County Health doesn’t want to test our bat. They say we need to quarantine the fur critter (Chloe, not the bat) for two weeks. My husband calls County Health and they say to bring the dead bat (not Chloe) in.

I open the canister where the bat is located, and — the bat is not dead. The bat is, however, very mad, injured from the cat’s rough treatment, and again, very mad. I dump it out on the sidewalk, trying to figure out how to put it out of its misery, and I can’t come up with anything. So I get my bat-handling gloves out, slide them on, and go outside to put the non-dead bat back into the creamer container. It attacks my glove and — well, it has white stuff on its head and around its mouth which is either saliva or creamer, but to this hydrophobicphobic, it’s not a good tiding.

Then, when I got back to the car, I realized my keys were in the house, and the house was locked. So there I was, in the car with the not-dead bat in a bucket and no way to drive it to whatever vet would be free to euthanize it. (That I didn’t fall over crying is a testimony to my psychiatric meds.) I instead texted my husband, who declared it a work from home day and drove to save me from my stupidity.

That being accomplished, I commandeered Richard to go on my extermination errand, followed by my “take the dead bat to County Health” errand. The following developments stymied us: 1) Vet #1 said she wasn’t our (by which I mean our cats’) provider, so she wouldn’t euthanize the bat. 2) Vet #2 was not equipped to euthanize bat; 3) Vet #3 never called back. So we called County Health, who prevailed upon Vet #1, and now our not-dead bat would find itself in the hereafter soon.

After that, Richard and I went for ice cream. We will pick up the deceased bat tomorrow and take it to County Health to find out its status Thursday or Friday. In the meantime, I will struggle with my hydrophobiaphobia, arguing with myself: “What if it DID manage to bite through those leather gloves?”

Hydrophobiaphobia

I have an irrational fear and have had it for most of my life, which is quite a few years. Hydrophobiaphobia (I’m told this is what it’s called) is fear of contracting rabies. I fear that someday some animal is going to bite me, or even slobber on me, and I am never going to see it again, and then I’m going to get rabies and die.

Dying is almost inevitable in rabies. Only 29 people have survived rabies ever. Even with the Milwaukee protocol, a method of supportive treatment, most don’t survive. Luckily, rabies is rare. Only one to three people in the US die of rabies each year. This is in part because of the over 60,000 preventive vaccine series given each year.

That does not stop me from my fear. I’m better than I used to be as a kid when I would pet cats and dogs and ask myself if they’d bitten me and I just couldn’t remember. I would lose sleep at night checking for brain malfunction.

Nowadays, I just worry a bit and keep an extra close eye on my cats. It’s necessary because we have bats in the house. Cute, fuzzy little rabies vectors that cats like to play with. So it’s a matter of vaccinating the cats and making sure to bring the bats in to the Public Health Department to test for rabies. I think about the actions it takes to get the treatment if it comes to that. And my fear is much better, because I have a solution.