Three nights ago I'm watching a movie on the couch with the giant shark/dolphin cuddly (5 feet of toothy softness) and out of who the fuck knows where a bat starts swooping all over the place. It looks as big as a goddamned Robin. (Batman and Robin?) anyway after running around swinging the shark/dolphin at it I chased it into the kitchen and left the door open so it could use its presumably excellent sonar to find the giant fucking point of egress.

Next night, watching another movie and enjoying a cocktail with the Shark/dolphin and lo and be-fucking-hold there's the GD bat again. Now, I'm more than annoyed and we take the fight into the kitchen and I whap the fucker with a broom and sweep him outside.

Last night, again, chillin with the Shark/dolphin and like a bad penny the fucker is back. This time I give him what for with the broom and then a little bit extra, to let him know I'm not amused. I swept him out again and this morning I didn't see his corpse, and I think I figured out how he was getting in. The previous administration could not figure out how to put the attic octagonal window screen in (it's an irregular octagon so it takes a full tablespoon of smarts to figure out) so she'd left it out and instead loosely stapled some remay over the window opening. (Why not close the window?)

I put the screen in the window and tonight we'll see if it comes back, which one of us isn't in it for the hunting...

Looks exactly like this but without the baby.

Yeah both of those are supposed to be in Living with nature thread. too many tabs open, not enough fresca

Just curious, what is remay? How would someone staple it over a window?

And (damn, here comes the boring part) if the batman/robin peed on you or there was any chance of contact, thou needest to hie thyself to the nearest ED for a series of rabies shots. Luckily the series hath been reduced to four, but still the lucky number is four. Fail not at thy peril.

Gonna live dangerously re the rabies, I realize the bat and I have been sharing living quarters for a while. I suddenly figured out what all the flickering shadows in my peripheral vision have been.

Remay is the stuff you put over plant beds to exclude insects.

I understood that the bats/ rabies myth has been busted. They were an inconvenience or somesuch and the real risk was inflated in order to try to wipe them out.

Sorry, I'm not intellectually capable of researching it at present.
And of course I'm not a Doctor and don't even perform as one in amateur dramatics.

They're protected in this country you know.
But then we have closed borders and rabies is virtually unknown here.
America is large enough to have cases of bubonic plague FFS, so it's hardly comparable.

Generally speaking, about 1% of the bat population carries rabies. You can't get it from urine or touch though, only spit/blood, and then only if that spit/blood gets into your own bloodstream, such as through a bite or an extended french-kissing session.

(Austin has a bat population of 1.5 million, the majority of which live under one major bridge in the middle of the city. There's a big bat sculpture downtown, and our hockey team is the IceBats. We're kind of fans of bats, here.)

A co2 fire extinguisher is great for killing bats inside. It kind of freezes them

Why... just why?
 

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Some questions will remain unanswered.

For the same reason you train a mule with a 2x4. First, you gotta get their attention. ;)

So glad we have a genuine internet doc in Clod, who soothes us with internet 'intelligence' regarding rabies, a virus that kills 99.9% of humans infected.

After all, the internet is such a rich source of truth.

If anyone wants actual verifiable information regarding infectious disease health issues, I suggest cdc.gov as a starting point. Also check out pubmed.com.

The CDC agrees with me, ortho.

http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/exposure/materials.html

And I'm sorry you still hate me.

The trouble is, it's impossible to tell whether you've had a significant exposure when a bat has been in a confined space with you, because many bats have teeth small enough that you won't know you've been bitten.

No, it's not the urine. But if a bat has been in a confined space with you, or you've woken to find it fluttering in your general space, you don't have any way to know whether you've had a significant exposure.

What I hate is the propensity of people who think they're authorities to hold forth and misinform others.

My only thought on this forum is to offer information that may inform others in a way that may help them protect themselves.

Okay.

Spoken in confidence; thank you very little.:mad: