An odd encounter with a bat

Because the temperature in southern Virginia can still get up into the 80's (Fahrenheit) during the day at this time of year, I do most of my work during the cooler evenings and nights.  To see what I'm doing I'll wear a headlamp and if I want to locate the bison without shining a light in their eyes I'll use night vision goggles.  

The bat detector.

Over the last few summers of working at night I've often seen bats (the small mammal kind of bat) flying through the air collecting insects. Usually they seem to fly among or just above the trees where there's the most insects and, if I'm working in a forested area, they've often flown very close to me.  I've always been impressed by their ability to fly so swiftly through a dense forest without crashing into anything and I once even built myself electronic heterodyning ultrasonic bat detector.  The detector allowed me to hear a bat's echolocation, which sounds like a series of clicks that periodically increases in tempo and then suddenly returns to the previous click rate.  This increased tempo is the sound of a bat closing in on an insect in flight.  The closer the bat gets to the insect the faster it clicks until the insect is caught and the bat returns to its normal navigational clicking.

A spectrogram of a recording I made with the bat detector.  The numbers at the top of the graph signify time in seconds.  In this recording you can see that the clicks were increasing in tempo indicating the bat was closing in on an insect.

Last week a bat's navigational skills appear to have failed when the bat flew directly into me while I was putting in the finishing work on a new section of fence.  Suddenly, out the darkness the bat flew directly into my chest and clung to my shirt.  Instinctively I tried to brush the bat off of me with my hand, which the bat tried to cling to before I flung it off completely.  Had I had a chance to think I wouldn't have tried to brush the bat away with my bare hand, but everything happened so quickly and that's what happened.

After I recovered from the surprise of the bat collision, I began to review the incident in my mind and realized that I could not be certain that I was only feeling the bats claws when it was clinging to my hand.  This fact combined with the additional fact that I did have several small open wounds on my hand (from the fencing work) led me to decide to go to a local medical clinic the following morning to consult with a physician.  The clinic immediately referred me to a hospital emergency room (ER) and the ER physician determined that I should get a post-exposure rabies vaccination.

I can recall as a kid hearing stories about how painful the rabies vaccine injections were, but things have gotten much better on that front.  Nowadays, aside from the initial immune globulin injection, there are only 4 vaccine injections in the arm over a 14 day period (as opposed to the 21 injections with a long needle into the stomach over a 21 day period for the previous vaccine).  So far I've had two of the four injections and, although the injections weren't too bad, I have to admit that I do feel pretty crappy.  By "crappy" I mean that I have a general feeling of being unwell.  I also seem to feel either too hot or too cold.  For example, while I was driving to the hospital today to get the second injection, I spent about half of the 1.5 hour trip with the air conditioning set at 65 degrees (F) and the other half of the trip with the heater set on 78 degrees.  Still, in spite of all of this, I am glad there is a vaccine and very glad it's only four shots.

Update: Oct. 30

I received my forth and final rabies vaccine injection on the 28th and I'm feeling pretty crappy again.  Prior to the 28th I had completely recovered from the previous injections, but now I'm back in bed.  During this last injection the doctor at the hospital commented that, although this kind of reaction isn't supposed to happen often, he had personally noticed several instances of people reacting negatively to the vaccine.  Of course, I'm more than happy to undergo the current inconvenience and avoid a certain terrible death.  Based on my recovery rate from the previous shots I'll probably begin feeling better tomorrow and recover completely a few days after that.

Update: Nov. 06

My recovery from the vaccine proceeded exactly as I had anticipated and I haven't experienced any problems since.  Since that time I've done a lot of reading and research on rabies and I'll have to say that I'm extremely grateful to have had access to the vaccine.  For those of you who may have been exposed to the rabies virus and are unsure if you need to seek treatment, I'd recommend viewing the following video.  If you are unaccustomed to seeing people die painfully, you may find this video disturbing.

One possible reason this man died in spite of medical treatment (I'm assuming all of the other villagers who were bitten were treated and recovered) may have been because he was bitten in the face.  People bitten in the head have a much higher risk of developing rabies even if they receive treatment because the virus has a much shorter distance to travel.  If, for some reason, you are still unsure about receiving treatment, I'd recommend viewing the following.  As with the previous video people who find viewing pain and death disturbing will find this video disturbing.

Finally, when you do see medical professionals for treatment, I'd strongly recommend also contacting your local health officials to make sure you received the proper treatment.  In my case, during my first visit to the ER, the staff did not give me the correct number of injections.  They also seemed confused about how many future vaccines I should receive.