Recently there was a paragraph in the paper about my neighborhood saying that a rabid bat had been found in someone’s house. I then made a question about this the first post on the new local bulletin board to see if I could find any additional information about it. I didn’t, but one person responded and that made me go look up more information. It’s not that I was worried about it, I had just never heard of rabid bats being a problem and wondered it if was just fear mongering or a legitimate public health concern.
I found an excellent page at the CDC’s website about bats and rabies and was very surprised to find that most cases of rabies in humans are caused by bats! Not dogs, not raccoons, but bats. So it is a more serious problem than I originally thought, though rabies still isn’t all that widespread. I imagine that one reason it can be a problem is that bats are pretty small and the sick bats are more likely to get in your house or come out during the daytime. Then people try to move them and, BAM! bat bite.