Had a guy who lives less than a mile from my house get bit. puts his bath robe on one am and a bat is all snuggled up in it. it ended up taking a piece out of his back and by the time the 80something year old fella got the robe off the bat falls to the floor so he stomps it into oblivion. almost doesn't do anything about it but the wife called me. sent it in, it tested + for rabies. yeah, they want an exclusion now...

this is a first for me as far as having someone bit by one that tested +.

michael

Rookie.... Lol

SOLD!

Guy's lucky he didn't destroy the specimen stomping it into oblivion; the Health Dept. likes the bats as intact as possible.

I'm at the age right now where if anything bites me, they take me in to be tested so the animal doesn't get sick.

lol

I've had cumstomers get histo, and not hire us for the attic clean out....

well believe it or not, this job is not sold yet! to be honest its not a small job, but not huge by any stretch. this 83 year old duffer just is not skeered at all of these little flying mice as he calls them. his wife is freaking out, and im still shaking my head. honestly he lives about 1 mi from me, so id rather they stay at his house then come down the road! lol

I had a husband and wife this year that had to get post-exposure rabies treatment as they stomped the bat into a glob of mush after it landed on the guy and bit him when he grabbed it to pull it off.

Another big mistake is freezing them. They should be kept cool (refrigerator) but never frozen, as freezing destroys cells and makes accuracy in rabies testing impossible.

Thanks for the freezing tip Ron. The refrigerator it is!

The real issue for DOH and others who take in these animals for testing whether bats, raccoon, skunk, etc... is that they need the tissue ready to process. If they must thaw them it takes time and if someone was exposed you create a problem for them in how quickly they can work to say yay or nay.

They can't warm it to expedite as heat kills rabies in a hurry. For surveillance activities where people aren't exposed it is common to freeze brains until a day of lab work is going to be done. Even from larger animals the amount of brain used each time is a tiny portion (example from a raccoon you might have a piece the size of a quarter in a sample container that is frozen and thawed overnight to allow you to test.

The dRIT test has become popular in the last 1/2 decade and is able to identify rabies positive or negative using a lab without the $30,000 microscope that DOH's have in house. We've done rabies testing in field situations on tail gates and in mobile trailer units that are just as accurate as the lab.

Where the lab comes in is that in order to type what form of rabies (which doesn't matter to the exposed individual) it must go to CDC from the health dept.

So the most important thing to remember is to keep it refrigerated fresh if possible because it allows a rapid diagnostic test in the DOH lab versus them waiting for a brain to thaw, which with raccoon and larger skulled animals can take some time in a controlled setting, and time is the key....

Ron is absolutely right though, cells rupture when frozen and thawed which can complicate many types of investigations you do with blood, tissue. We've seen studies done with frozen and old tissues that produced a prevalence of bovine tb for example that was around 3%, whereas with fresh tissues not frozen and moved quickly to labs the results were 30% or higher! With rabies you want to move that tissue as quickly as possible to DOH out of your hands especially if you don't like the word "liability."

Here in NC, from what I've been told from customers, the average cost for post exposure is around $10,000.00 depending on body weight. Pre- exposure coated me $600.00.

It's certainly not cheap. Recently while working on a church bat job, a guy from across the street (owns/operates a funeral home) came over to talk. He has 2 young boys, 2 and 4. Woke up to find a bat in their bedroom, caught it and tossed it out the window. It flew off.

Next day they contact their family doctor after a couple people told them about the rabies risk. Doc orders ALL of them to get the post-exposure treatments. Mom, dad, and both kids @ $6000 each. Throwing that bat out the window was a $24,000 mistake. Insurance refused to pay as no proof of being bitten or exposed.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves..... total lack of public education regarding bats in homes. Why is there no standard protocol on a national level? Don't try telling me it's not a common issue. I see this at least 10 times a year, and that's only in my own service area.

Very true Ron, not only are shots expensive but folks don't seem to have some basic understanding of when the issue is a potential problem. While most state DOH have clear rules about bats, many do not, some would gladly test a bat that was outside hanging in your entryway that you never touched until it dropped dead on the ground and was scooped up with a dust pan, bagged and brought in.

For clients or the general public obviously protecting them goes two ways. We must protect them from the actual risks of contracting rabies, we must also protect them from the being overhyped about the situations that should not lead to testing or shots.

The average homeowner would take rabies education and run in the hype direction, which we could say at least protects people, but the outcome of a major education campaign of this type would also be far more slant against bats and dead bats where something didn't need to happen.

I've got no issue with the single bats being captured and tested within the house, but my gosh there are tons of folks who think every bat they see in the yard or on the exterior, or who flies in through a window during a summer night party and then leaves, must be tested as well.

Tough balancing act, but I sure wouldn't want to pay out $24K or more for my family to make that mistake with a situation that warranted testing.

It's kinda like any public safety issue; by and large, the better-educated folks know it's not conducive to a long life to use tobacco, drive without seatbelts, mow the lawn in their bare feet, etc. I think they are also better able to understand the science behind causal relationships. There are those (such as tobacco industry lawyers) who, to quote Mad Magazine, "won't admit that smoking is bad for you unless 100% of smokers keel over dead on their first drag off a cigarette."
This is partially the reason that people will buy lottery tickets when their chance of winning is one in 175 million.

Dave, I must have gotten well educated 32 years ago. That's how long it's been since I've had a beer and a cigarette. ( But after the Packer game today I sure could have used a couple of each )

That 24k mistake is one reason that we decided to hold bats in our refrigerator that have been taken out of living areas. If a customer changes his mind, at least we have the bat. Okay guys, how long can the bat be refrigerated before it's no longer testable?

Wink,

I'll get you a more firm answer, but you should be good at least a few days. After that point decomp is going to be occurring and that's where you might lose the ability. But it may be a week or more depending.

I'll see what I have for a clinical answer and drop it on here in the next day or so.

"If a customer changes his mind"? About what?? In our service, the customer has no decision to make about the disposition of his bat. If the bat could have contacted a human or pet, off it goes for testing. And we do NOT leave that up to the customer to do.

do you cover that fee Dave? I just sent one in and it was $114 and change.

michael

I'm not sure that would work here Dave. I don't know that we as a company can request to have a whole bunch of bats tested. I do believe that the customer must make the request.