I remember early on in my stay in the midwest, I saw a squirrel acting very aggressively. I called animal control and expressed my concern it might have rabies. Animal control said that whatever would have given it rabies would have killed it. That is it good theory and all but there is something that they might have overlooked.. Bats. If you feed a bat, you could get rabies because of their saliva.
Not surprised at the nonchalant attitude of animal control. About six years ago, I was out delivering meds to an apartment complex which was near a wooded area. There was a pretty sizable population of feral cats in the area. The residents of the complex had set up feeding stations around the buildings for the little bastards. As I was coming out of the community center, someone called out to me with a question. I was backing out the door as I answered and right at that exact time, a cat ran around the side of the building, running from another cat, ran into me then bit me in the calf. I only had a short time to deliver the rest of the meds so I didn't check my leg until later. I found that it had bitten me pretty deeply, my sock had absorbed the blood. I called into work and our insurance gal instructed me to go to our local ER to get it checked out. While waiting forever, I did some research and found that cats and bats were our leading carriers of rabies in the county the previous year. When I was finally seen, an intern cleaned the wound and gave me a tetanus shot. I asked him about rabies. He said if it had been a dog bite, they'd have started me on the rabies series, but since it was a cat, no. I pointed out my findings about scum ridden cats in our county and he said they didn't keep immunoglobulin on site. He also said the odds of the cat having rabies was one in a million. I explained that a boy who had lived in our house before we purchased it had passed away from a snake bite. I told him that I knew the doctor in MO who passed away from a Brown Recluse bite (the only known fatality from such a thing at the time). He directed me to the county health department. Went there and the NP that was running the place suggested I catch the cat that bit me so it could be tested. She asked if I could identify it. I told her all I saw was its black ass (not racist, that's what color it was) as it ran around the corner. I told her there must be something like 30 cats in the area, most of them black in color. She decided to start me on the rabies series. I asked about immunoglobulin. She said they didn't keep it on hand because of the cost and its short shelf life. I called into work and spoke to the insurance lady to tell her what was going on. She advised me to wait for her to call me back. About twenty minutes later, I get a call from an agent from Berkshire Hathaway who instructed me NOT to take the series until after I received immunoglobulin. He sent me to a KC hospital that had immunoglobulin on hand. I received nine excruciating shots around the bite area. The doc reckoned that he used about $10K worth of the stuff. He set me up to receive a series of vaccinations over the next few weeks. I got the invoice in the mail...just under $24K! Thank you Warren Buffet for picking up the tab!
