So, Sunday August 12 was my wife's 32nd birthday and Tuesday August 14 was my 38th.
In honor of our birthdays we decided to get rabies vaccinations on August 17th.
What brought us to this decision? Funny you should ask? (though you probably didn't, you're gonna hear it anyway).
August 15th was a long day. Natasha was at a workshop from about 8am until 3pm and then we had to go into NYC for my grandfather's 94th birthday dinner. We got back from NYC around 9pm, dropped my parents at their house, took Malcolm home put him in bed and retired for the evening. Tash was exhausted and promptly fell asleep. I always take a while to unwind, but by 11:30 I was in bed.
At 5am I'm aroused by a sound. It's still dark outside. So I look at the clock and register the time. I listen and hear this fluttering sound. Upon looking up I see this small dark object circling over our heads. I promptly start turning on every light I can reach to confirm that we have a bat in our bedroom.
Tash, groggily wakes, registers my concerns and hides under the covers.
I go screaming like a girl across the room, ducking as low as I can, turning on even more lights. I quickly dart out of our room into the laundry room and yank the screen, open the window and turn on the lights. Of course, now every insect in America is starting to come in, but maybe the bat will leave. Luckily, Malcolm's door is closed and he's asleep.
The bat never leaves our room and eventually flies into our bathroom. I quickly shut the pocket door that separates our bathroom from our bedroom and then close up the laundry room. At least the bat is "trapped" and we can call animal control in the morning.
No one sleeps the rest of the "night". Well...that means mostly me as I'm on line researching what to do if there's a bat in the house.
Frightening stories go past my eyes as I read of what to do and what not to do. I don't think the bat bit either of us, but apparently there's a chance you may not know. Thankfully, Malcolm was nowhere near the bat. We call a place that handles bats at a "reasonable" hour (8am) and the guy says he or his partner will come between 11am and 1pm and his rates are $145 an hour to search. OK. We know where the bat was, so hopefully this will be $145 well spent.
The guy's partner arrives and we show him the location. He searches and finds nothing. He lets us know that a bat only needs a quarter inch opening to hide in, so he's not surprised he can't find him. He suggests we all go for rabies shots just in case, leaves a pamphlet and says to call if the bat returns (when I ask even at 3am, he's a bit hesitant).
That night I come home from a rehearsal around 11pm to find Tash and Malcolm waiting for me in the basement. He won't go to sleep. So we take him for a drive and discuss bringing him into our room when he does. We're out for about 45 minutes and he finally falls asleep...but instead of bringing him into our bed like we discussed, I put him in his bed and close his door as we normally do.
We put all the lights on in our bathroom/closet area and close the pocket door. Tash falls asleep, but I'm having problems. At 3am I go to the bathroom. While sitting there minding my own business, I hear a thump against the window screen. Bruce (my name for our visitor) has returned and he's staring right at me. I run out faster than I've ever run before and reshut the pocket door. I wake my wife informing her the bat is back/still here. We formulate a game plan.
We shut the door to our room. We pull open a window, yank our the screen and turn on all the lights. We then open the pocket door. Bruce comes flying out and proceeds to flap around us ignoring the open window escape route. Tash crawls over to the bed and grabs a blanket which I attempt to throw over the bat (no success, it drives him behind a window shade). We carefully escape from the room.
Downstairs we call the people who we had already called. There is no answer so we leave a message. I think yank open the phone book and start looking for ads under "Pest Control" that have the words "bat" "emergency" and 24 Hour" in them. We pick the first one and call, waking a woman and her husband. The husband says its $150 for an after hours call and that I should go shut the window cause if he's coming out there had better be a bat. I go and do so, but don't see the bat in the process.
The guy arrives and proceeds to go upstairs and start his search. He turns off every light in the room and spends the next hour looking in every crack and crevice (and there are a lot). He eventually gives up and tells us he can't find anything. Now it may have gone out the window, but it may not have. If the bat reappears, even if its right after he leaves, we are to call him on his cell phone and he'll come right back. He even says he's gonna come back over the weekend and check the outside of the house as well as the attic for any openings or other bats. And he's only charging us $75 instead of the quoted $150 (I pay that anyway as I was grateful he was so much more helpful than the earlier guy). On leaving, he suggested we call our doctors and set up appointments to get rabies shots just in case. He leaves us pamphlets from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) stating the same thing. All of the online stuff I've read has also said we should all get shots.
In the morning (which sounds like it was hours later, but it wasn't...Tash & I slept in the den, she on the couch, me on the floor), we decided that we'd all go to New Haven together since Tash had a paying gig on a film and was too tired to drive alone and I was too tired to watch Malcolm alone. So on the way we called doctors.
Malcolm's pediatrician asked many questions about Malcolm's proximity to the bat. As far as we could tell, there was no reason to think Malcolm had been exposed to the bat. Both times he was in his room with the door closed and the bat stayed in our room/bathroom (with a brief foray into the hall that first night). His doctor didn't think he should get the rabies shots since there was no reason to suspect exposure (had Malcolm been in the same room at any point she would have recommended putting a 2 year old through a series of shots...thankfully I had the sense to not bring him into our room that second night).
Now, our doctor basically said we'd know if we were bitten and there was no reason to get the shots and hung up (okay...I'm exaggerating, but that's what it felt like). Malcolm's pediatrician even suggested that Tash & I get the shots. We talked over our options (and even got advice from family members and friends we trust...let's face it, we were working on making important decisions with very little sleep), to get the shots or not get the shots. Since we didn't have the bat, we couldn't get it tested for rabies. So that wasn't an option to help. It was either not get the shots and hope for the best (with the worst case being one of us does have it and dies an agonizing horrible painful death and then the survivor sues our doctor for malpractise) or get the shots and have peace of mind. We decided we'd rather be safe than sorry and went down to the Emergency Room (we left Malcolm with a friend who has been staying in our basement also away from the bat).
When I was in the hospital five years ago for my aneurysm, I had lots of shots. And in spite of my father's antiquated warnings of 20 needles in the stomach, I knew this would be easier to take than death. Turns out the rabies vaccine is a series of shots. The first day you get two...well...sort of two. The first is a shot in the arm with one drug. The second is a series of shots in the lower back/upper ass of a second drug based on your size. Needless to say, I'm a big guy. I got six shots (two in each ass cheek and one in each thigh). Tash got 5 (all in the ass). We now have to go back on specific days (all counted after the first day of shots) to get subsequent injections of the first drug. So all we get now is a shot in the arm four more times (Day 3, Day 7, Day 14 and Day 28). Not a big deal when you're other option could be death.
Call me a hypocondriac on this one if you like...I feel better mentally...we even slept better last night...although we all slept at my mom's. Tonight, we're sleeping at home and we've got a game plan if Bruce reappears. Lock him in our room again and call the second guy right away no matter what time it is. He said he'd stay until he caught the bat.
So that's our birthday presents to each other this year. Peace of mind.
I'll let you know if we ever see Bruce the Bat again.
Be seeing you.
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