Daillie Rafol didn’t think much of the slight sting he felt recently while grilling hamburgers at his Lee’s Summit home. In fact, it felt like a bullfrog nibbling on his left big toe.
But it was a bat, and he soon discovered it was rabid.
It was the third time since June 1 that Lee’s Summit animal control has recovered a rabid bat. But this was the first time that someone was bitten by one of them.
Yet state health officials say there is no need to panic about a potential rabid bat epidemic breaking out in the area.
“There are always a few cases of rabies within bats in Missouri,” said Tony Elliott, a bat biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. “It is not uncommon that after the first bat is found in a certain location that more bats get turned in and a few more positives show up.”
So far, there have been 14 rabies cases reported in animals this year in Missouri. Seven were rabid bats and the others were infected skunks. Those animals are the two primary carriers of rabies throughout Missouri, according to state officials.
Lee’s Summit has impounded about 45 bats this year and has tested 26 of them.
“It is not unusual to have three bats test positive,” said Rodney Wagner, the manager of the city’s animal control department. “The fact that it bit someone is not a good deal. Rabies are almost 100 percent fatal if it goes untreated.”
About two weeks before Rafol’s bat encounter, Missouri health officials had sent out an advisory about a statewide rabies threat. It said animal rabies are common throughout the year, with the highest occurrences during the warm weather months.
The number of rabid cases this year is substantially lower than the 39 rabies cases reported for the same time a year ago. Missouri usually has about 50 rabid animals that are detected annually, according to state health officials.
There have been two rabid bat cases in St. Louis County this year. Kansas City health officials said their last confirmed rabid bat incident occurred in June 2012.
Kansas has had 26 cases of animal rabies reported this year, one of them in Douglas County.
Missouri has 12 to 15 bat species.
Bats are good for the environment and especially helpful to farmers.
Bats consume about half of their body weight each night, eating certain beetles, mosquitoes and some moths. Officials estimate that Missouri’s 775,000 gray bats alone feast on more than 223 billion bugs each year, or about 540 tons.
Big brown bats are commonly found in urban areas and occupy buildings and residences. It is easy for a bat to slide into an opening in an attic or through a small crack.
On June 8, a Lee’s Summit family found a bat in their laundry room nestling inside a blanket. The family took it outside, left it on the driveway and alerted the city’s animal control officials. That bat later tested positive for rabies, Wagner said.
Bats normally don’t attack people and may wander into a residence looking for water or insects to eat.
“They don’t want to have anything to do with people,” Wagner said. “Bats may end up in people’s houses and it freaks them out. One of the biggest problems is with bats getting into a house, and if your pet gets a hold of them, then that could be a bad deal if the bat has rabies.”
Rafol said it wasn’t until the day after he was bitten that he and his wife discovered the bat was still hanging upside down on a set of steps near the barbecue grill. They then contacted the city’s animal control. Rafol later visited the emergency room to get treated for the bite.
Once the bat tested positive, Rafol began a regimen of shots to treat rabies.
“Those (shots) turned out to be more painful than being bitten by the bat,” Rafol said.
KANSAS CITY STAR