I'm pumped for fall! Give me pumpkins, ghosts and bats...you know, as long as the bats are Halloween decorations. 

When we were up at Tamarack for our honeymoon, we spent one of our evenings lounging around the gorgeous pool and hot tub at the Lodge at Osprey Meadows. The sun was just setting when I noticed something flying around the pool deck.  "Those are bats." My husband insisted that I was wrong, but after watching their flight patterns he finally gave up on his "they're birds" arguments and realized I was right.  Sure, it gave us the hee-bee-jeebies, but they weren't bothering anyone.

One man in Boise wasn't as lucky as we were during our bat encounter.  According to Channel 6, the man spent the day outside during daylight hours.  When he had called it day and went inside, he felt something hanging onto his back and tried to swat it off.  To his surprise, it wasn't leaves or a bug stuck to him, but a bat! He followed the proper protocol for bat encounters: safely capture the bat and submit it for testing. Unfortunately, the results weren't exactly what he was hoping for. The bat's tests came back positive for rabies.

Now that man is undergoing rabies prevention therapy since the disease is almost 100% fatal to both humans and animals who go untreated.  The disease eventually attacks the central nervous system including the brain and spinal cord but initially presents itself as flu like symptoms: weakness, fever and headache.

This encounter comes just weeks after a Boise family woke up to find bats in their Cascade cabin.  They weren't able to trap the bats, but ended up going for treatment when a friend helped them realize they could've been exposed to rabies in their sleep.  That's the scary part! Bats have incredibly small teeth so you might not feel them bite you if you're asleep and the bite could heal by morning, so you'd never know it happened.

After the Cascade incident, Channel 2 shared some bat safety tips.  Click HERE to see how to protect your family!

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