Lincoln woman recalls experience of finding bat in her home

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Deb Arends knows a lot about bats.

She knows that a single bat can eat a thousand mosquitoes in an hour, that they eat the mosquitoes in flight.

She knows bats have to drop to fly, which is why they hang on to the side of the house, getting ready to drop and fly.

And Arends knows exactly how it feels to wake up with a bat in your bed, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

It was a Sunday morning last year in mid-August — the height of bat season — when Arends felt something by her side. She scooped it up and flung it away. It was a bat.

So she screamed.

The bat — often described as mouse-like with wings and stapler-like teeth — ended up hanging on her bedroom drapery.

Arends got the grandkids' butterfly net, captured the lethargic bat and put him in a little plastic container.

She showered. (After all she'd just met a bat in bed.) She left the captured bat on her porch and went out for breakfast.

Animal Control picked up the bat, had it tested, and late Tuesday afternoon Arends got the results. The bat had rabies.

Arends immediately contacted her doctor and set up an appointment for the next morning. Her doctor referred her to Bryan East's specialty clinic, where she started the two-week series of shots that would assure she wouldn't die from rabies.

Arends knew not to mess with a potential bat bite.

The experts recommend people get the shots if they are in the same room with a bat, even if they do not know for sure that the bat has rabies, or if they have come in contact with a bat and the bat is not captured and tested for rabies.

Even bat saliva in a cut, or accidentally rubbed in your eye is dangerous.

Rabies is fatal. There is no cure. Without the immunization shots, you die.

The shots...