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It was just earlier this week that Prince George's County was warning its residents of a marked increase in rabid bat activity, and now the District of Columbia Department of Health is following suit. The rabid bat menace has reached D.C.'s borders.
A reported 13 bats caught by D.C. officials have tested positive for rabies recently, most of them discovered inside people's homes. Residents are urged to “bat proof” their homes by closing windows and doors, repairing broken window screens and other points of entry such as loose shingles, vents and chimneys to prevent bats from entering their homes.
Here's DOH's guidelines for what to do if you find a bat in your house:
* Contact animal control for assistance by calling 311.
* Contain the bat in the room. Close the windows. Close the door.
* Leave the room after closing the door.
* DO NOT handle the bat. Wait for the animal control officer to assist.
* DO NOT release the bat. DOH may want to test the bat for rabies.
* Repair home to keep out bats and other wild animals.
The full advisory can be found here.
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* Do not grab your Louisville Slugger and attempt to play the hero in front of the girl you came home with
* If you are a registered gun owner in DC, do not take out frustration with gun regulation on the animal intruder. This is not a clear case of self defense and furthermore the bat has nothing to do with gun regulation.
Between asshole protesters invading the city, a "mayor-for-life" constantly breaking the law, a public transit-system out to kill us all, job woes, traffic snarls, and political strife at home and abroad, I've always been able to say "At least I won't get bitten by rabit bats."
Until now.
* Leave the room after closing the door.
shouldn't you leave the room then close the door?
FATHER: You're marrying Princess Lucky, so you'd better get used to the idea! Guards!
TWO GUARDS enter and stand to attention on either side of the door. One of them has hiccoughs and does so throughout.
FATHER: Make sure the Prince doesn't leave this room until I come and get him.
FIRST GUARD: Not ... to leave the room ... even if you come and get him.
FATHER: No. Until I come and get him.
SECOND GUARD: Hic.
sorry, meant that as a reply to nowisthetime
how about whack the bat with a tennis racket? they can then check the tiny little bat corpse with tennis racket marks on its dead little face for rabies?!?
All kidding aside, there is no cure for rabies. Once you show symptoms, it is too late. Worldwide, 55,000 people a year die a year because of rabies. If there is a bat in your house, report it.
There is no cure for rabies ONCE the symptoms appear. Before that you can go through the rabies immunization treatment. While not a easy process with multiple shots over the course of a month, it is much better than the stomach shots you had to get when I was a kid. I had a schoolmate in elementary school that had to go through that and it sounded horrible.
Yep, but it is apparently possible to be bitten while asleep and not know it. If you belive Ira Glass, anyway (there was some story about a rabid animal on This American Life a while back). So if you ever find a bat in a room with a sleeping person, take that person to be checked for bites and/or precautionary rabies treatment.
That being said, this is a bit alarmist. But I guess it's better to be safe and silly than rabid, right?
Time to call up Dwight Schrute, armed with paintball helmet and garbage bag.
Time to call up Dwight Schrute, armed with paintball helmet and garbage bag.
Myth: 3 people die from rabies every year.
Fact: 4 people die every year from rabies.
From: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GVK/is_5_8/ai_87104051/?tag=untagged
"In the past 11 years, total human rabies deaths have averaged 2.9/ year, and 24 (75%) of 32 deaths were due to bat RABV variants."
These are US figures, not global figures. More people die in the US each year from Malaria than rabies.
My sister's new kitten attacked a bat and had to be quarentined 6 months due to the threat it had rabies (this was not in Washington). Thankfully it hasn't had problems, but rabies is indeed a serious disease - disappointing to hear it's coming to bats in DC.
I had rabies once. Well, not really. It was more like the crud.
Get back in the Batmobile Liz.
I kinda like that the only images WTOP and DCist find are huge fruit bats, which can have 5 ft wingspans. We have little brown bats here. Tiny. Teeny. It's really not hard to find an image that is more accurate and not scare the public into another media-induced frenzy of OMG HUGE RABID BATS! Just sayin'.
Bats are awesome. The eat mosquitoes.
More people die from bites from their pets.
This is typical journalistic hysteria.
I blame Hollywood and this new vampire movie/tv show trend. Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?!