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Did you know a rabid bat could bite you in your sleep and you'd never know until you start to die?

Karen Wise explains why her entire family is now getting rabies shots, not that she knows for a fact that the bat that was flying around in her house was rabid, since her husband let it fly out, when, as they now know, you're supposed to trap it somehow and let Animal Control test it for rabies.

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Comments

Maybe Animal Control will be willing to take care of the bat that's in my kitchen suspended ceiling right now, since I haven't been able to get him to fly out the window.

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I'm really confused - can a bat bite you and NOT LEAVE A MARK OF ANY KIND? That seems kind of odd.

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Yes. Bats are small. They can also bite you somewhere where you wouldn't see it even if it showed, like under your hair.

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I don't know why an insect-eating bat would want to bite you in your sleep. These are not vampire bats we're talking about. I'd like to see the data on how many people die of un-noticed bat bites per year.

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Sometimes they fly around and might simply bump into you, scratch you, get scratched by you, insert bat saliva on you etc, etc.

Id say its very rare to find someone dying from a bat bite, but there is no cure for rabies once it starts going I guess. You have to clean it right away with soap and water and then get those shots.

thats why you shouldnt take a chance and you should simply try to get the bat tested. I actually think you can bring it down to the State lab in Jamaica Plain if you want (or dont want to wait for animal services in your town or city)

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A bat that eats insects might bite a human because it was rabid.

Witness this story, where a girl was in church and got bit by a rabid bat.

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True story.

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In 2002, looking back over a decade of data, 26 people died of untreated rabies. 24 were due to bats. Only 2 of the 24 had definitively reported bites from the bat. This led researchers to conclude that the other 22 were bitten and had absolutely no idea.

So, 22 people in 10 years were silently bitten by a bat and died of the ensuing rabies infection.

Rabies is the kind of thing that's just worth being prophylactic if there's a chance of infection however. When treated early post-infection, it's relatively harmless. Untreated maladies are really really torturous sounding and if it progress long enough untreated it is irreversible and lethal. So, why take the risk?

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Thanks very much - that's exactly the clarification that I hoped for.

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