Bat in bedroom

Hi everyone, this morning around 3 am I woke up to a sound in my bedroom. It wasn’t very loud so I didn’t feel like I had to get up and check. Well, when I got up around 8 am I was getting dressed and heard the sound again and some squeaking and scratching. It was coming from my dresser so I went over and saw a very small bat stuck in between the back of the dresser and the wall. After some difficulty, I was finally able to get it out using a towel and opening the window.

My concern now is the possibility of rabies. I checked around my body and didn’t notice any bites or scratches, but I’ve heard that bats don’t tend to leave any major marks. I’m just worried that I was in the same room as the bat for possibly the whole night. The bat was very small and I didn’t feel anything, so I really don’t want to have to spend a lot of money and pain on some treatment that I might not even need. But at the same time I don’t want to take my chances. I guess ideally I shouldn’t have let the bat go but in the moment I was so stunned that my main focus was getting it out of the house. Should I go the hospital or am I overreacting?

You fall under CDC guidelines for the shots. Same thing happened at my house, only we found the bat dead. It was too old to test. My daughter got shots as it was in her room. The rest of us did not fall under guideline so did not get them.

I think in such a case, it is a judgement call. Canada decided NOT to recommend shots when an adult wakes to a bat in the room, unless that adult is impaired in some way. This is because the chance of getting rabies from a bat under that circumstance is literally like 1 or 2 in a billion.

Because of my daughter, I read a lot about bat rabies cases, and it seems to me, the vast majority of cases, the person woke up to find the bat on them or near them. There are cases where no one knows how the exposure happened, but there could be alternative explanations for many of those. There is only one kid case that I know about that a girl did not wake up at all through a bat encounter, even though her family was in there killing it. Kids are kids though, lol!

In your case, I would probably call the Health Dept on Monday and your GP. I am probably more on the conservative side with this, but I know there are people who have refused shots after waking to a bat in the room. Yeep. Sorry you are going through this!!!