Bat Boy

On Wednesday, with a backyard full of neighbor kids (typical night at our house), Riley comes in and says, "There's a dead bat outside and it feels funny!" Rut-roh! At first I thought he was joking but no, there is surely a dead bat in the backyard, so David puts on a glove and takes it to the trash, we make Riley wash his hands for like 30 minutes in boiling water and ask everyone else if they touched it, no one had even seen it, so thank goodness no one did.

Some friends recommended we call animal control, so the next morning we call and they send out a police officer to take away the bat for testing, and make a report since Riley did touch the bat. Well, I end up calling the pediatrician to make sure we don't need to do anything extra for Riley and in the meantime, animal control calls back and says they they did test the bat, and it was positive for rabies.

Animal control wants us to home quarantine Bailey for 45 days, which basically means he's on house arrest and can't have any more doggy play-dates, which isn't that big of a deal, not like he went anywhere anyway.

Riley on the other hand, has to have a bunch of shots, poor guy. The pediatrician called back and told us we had to head to Brackenridge, the county hospital, because it's the only place in town that has the rabies vaccine, so Riley and I head up there last night, get there about 5:30. We get to see a guy who cut the tip of his finger off and had the tip with him on ice packs, Riley thought that was neat, I almost passed out from the blood, yuck! We wait, then wait some more, and some more...

Finally, we had to go down to the pharmacy to get the vaccine (over $1,000 for that, which I'm hoping insurance covers!) and then head back up to the emergency room in time to hear the doctor talking to the nurses about how SHE had to have the rabies shots once for a dog attack and she was talking about how horrible these first immunoglobulin shots are, and she feels for poor "rabies kid" and at least the new nickname got Riley laughing.

They put some numbing stuff on Riley to help, on both thighs, both butt cheeks, and both arms, and at first gave him this toddler gown to put on, and we had a good laugh about that cause Riley just told them no. It had cute little cows or something on it, and he just looked at the guy and said, "I'm not wearing that." The only other option was the adult size, but he said he would rather be in a huge gown than that little kid thing, it was funny.

Then came the shots, it was rough. He had 5, so they got both legs, both cheeks, and his left arm, and it hurt bad. It took him a while to compose himself after all that, I felt so bad cause I knew he wanted to be so brave and tough, but it was so hard. Then we had to wait another 30 minutes to make sure he didn't have a reaction, which he didn't. So we got to take our super expensive vaccines and leave, a little after 10:00! Almost 5 hours later!!

So now we are on a strict shot schedule, they have to be taken on specific days, so we go again for more shots on Monday, then on Friday, then a week after that, then 2 weeks after that, and I think there will be 18 shots in all.

Riley told me he wished he had a remote control so he could rewind and not pick up that bat. I said we all wish we had one of those sometimes. Living in Austin, I think everyone knows you don't pick up dead bats, but he just wanted to be curious, and I understand that, but we explained next time, wear a glove!! He gets it now!

And then we're having a Rabies-Free party!! I told Riley I will make him a bat cake, we'll go watch the bats fly out from the Congress Ave bridge and just have a bat celebration!!