Wonder Woman has a cooler costume, but I guess I'll settle for Batwoman.

I am happy to report that I am now 100% vaccinated for rabies. And, four weeks after my last shot, my left arm finally does not hurt any more.

What state of affairs must occur to require a need for the rabies vaccine, you ask. Let me tell you a story (you might want to use the restroom and freshen up your coffee before proceeding, it’s a long one):

About a month and a half ago I was in my bedroom, minding my own business, sleeping peacefully when I awoke to a rapid ‘phshphshpshphsh’ sound and something fluttering around my room. Honest to goodness, my first thought was “there is a huge bug flying around in my room…perhaps a flying cockroach?” I turned on the bedside lamp and discovered nope, not a huge bug, but a good-sized bat.

My sister is forever on my case about my inability to listen to my Right Brain over my Left Brain. She would have been proud of me in that moment, because my Right Brain definitely dominated the situation. I turned on more lights and started swinging at the disoriented bat (which was now dive-bombing me) with my pillow despite a small voice in the back of my head saying, “this is not helpful.” My ever trusty Left Brain finally fully awoke and the “this is not helpful” became louder and I ducked out of the bedroom and shut the French doors.

I stood there watching it flying around and debated leaving it alone and dealing with it in the morning. But after a few minutes of standing there remembered that it was one of those super hot nights and I would be damned if that bat kicked me out of the coolest room in the house.

Resolved to go after the bat I realized I needed two things: a tennis racket and some clothes. Like I said, it was one of those super hot nights so I wasn’t sleeping in much (anything) and I was not about to go after this bat naked. Left Brain was definitely fully awake at this point, and bat hunting while naked simply did not seem like a good idea.

Exiled from my room (and clothes) I wasn’t sure how I was going to solve the whole “not wanting to kill a bat naked” thing and then I remembered: I keep my dresses in the closet in the spare room. So armed with a tennis racket and looking good (despite a serious case of bedhead) in a cute summer dress, I was ready for action.

I waited for the bat to land on the windowsill and went in for the kill.

It wasn’t pretty (did you know that bats can flatten out to avoid getting squashed-to-death, all the while hissing and squealing and flashing their claws?). I deftly flipped the pinned bat into a bag, put the bag down and beat the thing with the tennis racket. I am not the fiercest of animal rights advocates, but I had just read Time magazine's article about animals ability to think and feel emotion and this made me feel quite guilty as I was pounding away.

Now that I was wide awake, I did what most people do at this point: stole some of my neighbors’ wireless internet and Googled “are bats in your bedroom a bad thing.”

This was a mistake. Because I found pictures like this:

And read statements like this:

In many of the human rabies cases caused by a bat-stain of the virus, there was no known history of a bite from a bat. For that reason, bats represent a special concern. Bats have very small teeth, and a bite from a bat may not be felt. Any direct contact with a bat represents a potential exposure to rabies. Other situations that might qualify as exposures include finding a bat in the same room as a person who may not be aware that contact has occurred, such as finding a bat in the room with a sleeping person, a child, or someone who is mentally disabled or intoxicated. If you think you may have been exposed to rabies from a bat, please DO NOT LET THE BAT GO.


I also realized at this point that in my pillow fight with the bat, I ended up with a scratch on my wrist and thus was certain that any moment I was going to start foaming at the mouth.

Needless to say, I did not sleep particularly well.

In hindsight, this was perhaps okay because when at 4:30 in the morning I once again heard a rapid ‘phshphshpshphsh’ sound and saw something fluttering in my room, my Left Brain was ready for action and I quickly exited the room.

That’s right people: two bats in one night.

I was pretty sure it was Mama Bat looking for her kid, or the recently deceased bat’s Best Bat Friend wondering where he went. Not wanting to suffer from the wrath of mama-bat or friend-bat, I was content to wait it out on the couch and deal with it in the daylight.

After a couple hours of vivid dreams of being eaten alive by bats, I got up and cautiously went into the bedroom. No bat in sight. My plan was to call my friend Phil who, no joke, loves to capture and release bats and have him take care of bat number two. This plan was thwarted, however, as I was gathering my things for the day and moved a plastic bag that was on the floor only to discover the bat sleeping soundly.

I kid you not: it was all curled up on the carpet, snoring and acting like we shared a room (okay, there wasn’t snoring….but the little sucker did look pretty content).

Not able to bring myself to kill two mammals in one day, and armed with new knowledge from my Google search the night before, I was determined to capture and release this one. So I traded the tennis racket for a Tupperware and piece of cardboard. As soon as I put the Tupperware over the bat, Semi-Cute-Content-Sleeping-Bat turned into Scary-Pissed-Off-I-Will-Kill-You-Bat and I started to breathe deeply and recite things like, “I’m bigger than you,” “you’re more afraid of me than I am of you,” and “vampires only exist in the movies.”

I’m not sure it helped.

But here is the abridged version (I know, finally) of what happened next:

I called my neighbor for moral support.
The doctor’s office called back (being the responsible citizen and slightly neurotic person that I am, I had called to report my scratch) and said the doctor wanted to see me.
Capture/release mode was quickly replaced with “you will die” mode.
I armed my neighbor with the tennis racket, came up with a plan to flip the trapped bat into a bag for the kill.
My trash bin now contained two bats, both in Trader Joe paper bags and, for extra insurance, a plastic Target bag.
The doctor’s visit resulted in me feeling stupid, overanxious, defensive (“I never said it was a bite!”) and at the same time responsible (I was simply following the instructions of the CDC that I found on the internet).
Later that day the doctor, who had all but assured me there was nothing to worry about, calls and says, “we need to talk about this further.” Lovely.
I end up having to dig the bats out of the trash, put them in my freezer for the night, and bring them in to get tested for rabies.
Which, resulted in the following phone call the next night:

“Kate, this is the Ottawa County Health Department. We’ve got a good news/bad news situation here. Good news: one of the bats tested negative for rabies. Bad news: the other bat’s spinal chord was so damaged that we were unable to test it for rabies. Meaning, we have to label it “inconclusive” and we need you to go ahead and get the rabies vaccination.”

What followed was at least six cumulative hours spent in health care facilities over the next two weeks (including an Urgent Care in North Carolina), an upper respiratory infection (from time spent in said Urgent Care), a reaction to the vaccine (from weakened immune system from said infection), eight shots each containing enough vaccine to fill a shot glass, one very sore arm and greater sympathy for people suffering from PTSD (my cat-like reflexes were even more reflexive if even a mosquito buzzed by my head).

All this to say, I think the moral of the story is two-fold:

One, know where to find the nearest tennis racket.
Two, it is not necessary to bludgeon a bat to death. But if you do by mistake, make sure you have good insurance.