Photo: Do Not Move, Bat Inside

Bat Inside

Bat under a recycling bin – A reader took this picture on Nassau Street late Sunday morning.

8 Comments

  1. Only in Princeton – where I am fortunate to have lived for the past 33 years. (Where I grew up, another type of bat would be involved to take care of the problem.)

    1. No idea what transpired here, but bats are nocturnal. If they are active and capturable during the daytime it can mean they are rabid. Contact with the saliva of a rabid bat can transmit rabies, so if you encounter a bat in your home or anywhere else a bat does not belong and there is any possibility that some form of contact may have occurred (an actual bite is not required to transmit rabies) you need to capture it for testing or plan to submit yourself or your children to a full course of rabies treatments.

      1. The risk of transmission is exceptionally low, unless the bat is handled.

        I worked in Animal Control in the Philly suburbs for a decade, it always astounded me how people moved out of the city to be closer to nature, but didn’t think nature included wildlife.

        1. Nonetheless, if you have a kid at camp and a bat is found in their cabin, they either turn over the bat for testing or all the kids in the cabin get shots, because no one knows for sure what has transpired and who is going to take that chance with another person’s life. Or are you advocating on behalf of rabid bats?

          1. Not at all, and you make the point I left unsaid, without a reasonable expectation of transmission, everyone would require prophylaxis. It is not nearly as bad as it once was, I think it is now one injection of gamma globulin intramuscular and three rabies vaccines subcutaneously, but it is expensive.

            A bat can cover a hundred miles in an evening, random testing tells nothing about local levels.

            1. Thank you for clarifying! Some people (like me) are so needle-phobic that we would scoot out of those shots if we thought we could.

  2. Has Animal Control Department arrived yet? They take 48 hours to return a phone call, says the recording device. It actually took over 2 weeks. Are they understaffed?

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