Winging it: The Observer comes face-to-face with a bat

It was 11 p.m. in downtown Little Rock, and The Observer was awake in bed in the dark when my cats started making a ruckus. Typical late-night behavior, so I paid it no mind. At least until a manic buzzing sound filled the room and made me investigate. I flipped on the lights and found not the cicada I expected, but a small bat lying flat on the ground, wings spread, with the cats surrounding it on both sides. I frantically yelled to my partner in the other room. 

We’d heard about the astronomical price for treatment if you’ve been exposed to a bat that might have rabies, so we got to work. Thus began a ridiculous and truly “Saturday Night Live”-worthy scramble to capture the bat so we could get it tested. I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but the process of trapping it involved such bleeding-edge innovations as a trash can, multiple trash bags, a sketch pad, a fitted sheet, a plastic storage container, a piece of cardboard and an ungodly amount of duct tape. We slept that night with the light on, the still-alive bat stowed as far away from us as we could get it.

First thing the next morning, my partner called the Arkansas Department of Health and proceeded to be passed around between a few comically clueless people until we were finally put through to the Little Rock Animal Village, which mostly specializes in facilitating the adoption of furry friends. One of the volunteers there, however, was quite helpful and connected us with Jennifer at the Department of Agriculture. 

Jennifer was quite helpful as well, but was also the bearer of some very unpleasant news: The bat would need to be dead before being delivered to the state lab for testing. 

Stephen, an extremely knowledgeable employee at the state lab and the next quite helpful person we dealt with, made us feel better by saying that, unless I woke up with the bat literally in the bed with me, it was very unlikely that I had been bitten, but that we were doing the right thing by getting it tested. Then he made us feel worse by suggesting that we kill the bat using the freezing method, which is about as simple and gruesome as it sounds. 

Thus began another morbid and hectic comedy routine of relocating the bat to a container small enough to fit in our freezer. Needless to say, bats are very good at clinging; the situation demanded much shaking. 

About 10 minutes passed with the bat stuffed in the chill chamber before the visceral thought of the poor animal dying a slow and frigid death overwhelmed me, so I got Stephen on the phone again and pleaded my case. For some reason, he agreed to let us drop the bat off alive. 

We carefully followed Stephen’s instructions, and a little later we found ourselves at a strange loading dock behind War Memorial Stadium. It absolutely did not feel like civilians were supposed to be there. After exchanging some crunchy, nearly indiscernible words through an ancient intercom system, we were let into an industrial-looking entryway filled with cardboard boxes. 

We explained the situation to the mystery man inside, who took one look at the container-bound creature and told us that it was already dead. The little guy had, after all, been put through the wringer. We filled out some nonsensical paperwork, got the hell out of there and headed home to wrangle our four felines for an emergency visit to the vet for rabies booster shots — only one of the cats peed themselves!

About 24 more hours of anxiety later, we got a call saying that our specimen’s rabies results had come back negative. Happy Halloween, I guess.