Pair of rabid bats in Jackson called coincidence

By Tom Hallberg, Jackson Hole News&Guide Via Wyoming News Exchange
Posted 8/20/19

Sitting around a campfire is the stereotypical camping activity: Flames lick the logs, someone roasts marshmallows while bats and nighthawks swoop around, eating mosquitoes.

For Ashley Pipkin …

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Pair of rabid bats in Jackson called coincidence

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Sitting around a campfire is the stereotypical camping activity: Flames lick the logs, someone roasts marshmallows while bats and nighthawks swoop around, eating mosquitoes.

For Ashley Pipkin that very scene in a Targhee National Forest campsite turned less than pastoral on Aug. 10 when a bat either fell onto her from a tree or flew into her neck in the dark.

She reacted involuntarily.

“I grabbed it with my hand,” she said, “then it bit me on the hand and I threw it on the ground.”

The presumably frightened, shaken critter scuttled into the darkness while Pipkin and her friends discussed what it might have been. She had a small wound on her hand, and she worried the animal had also bitten her neck.

Then they heard it vocalizing near their camp; eventually the bat crept close to their camp and into view.

A friend among the group of biologists helped put the animal in a lunchbox.

Given that it was nighttime, and ranger stations and bat-testing labs were closed, the group observed the bat in its temporary confinement. It looked agitated and needed to drink water, which are signs of rabies but also of stress. The biologists were split on the diagnosis, but Pipkin was “pretty sure it had rabies.”

Pipkin later dropped the bat off with scientists at Centers for Disease Control lab in Bozeman, Montana. Pipkin had to wait until Monday for results, when she learned the bat tested positive for rabies.

When Pipkin talked with the News&Guide last week, she was tired from the first shot in the rabies treatment, a four- or five-shot regimen that can take up to a month.

Her contact with the rabid bat came just a few days after a visitor to Grand Teton National Park had an oddly similar experience.

The morning of Aug. 5, a group was heading out from the Jenny Lake boat ramp for a hike. As they ascended the trail a bat fell from the canopy and landed on a woman’s neck. As she swatted it away, it bit her left thumb, then crawled around on the ground.

Park rangers helped deliver the bat to the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory, which confirmed it was rabid.

Having a pair of confirmed human contacts with rabies-positive animals within about a week and roughly 30 miles apart as the bat flies is uncommon but not as wild as it might sound, said Wyoming Game and Fish Nongame Mammal Biologist Nichole Bjornlie.

“Rabies is pretty rare, but we do get some cases that pop up,” she said. “It is really odd that they both involved bats falling out of trees.”

Both Bjornlie and Western Ecosystems Technology biologist Larisa Bishop-Boros said about 0.5 percent of wild bats have rabies.

From the circumstances it is almost impossible to tell if the bats were tree-roosting species that happened to have rabies or if they were acting strangely, which is a mark of rabid animals.

The proximity of the rabid bats combined with the pair of rabid bats found in Teton County in 2017 could spark suspicions of a trend, but the biologists said it is likely an odd coincidence.

For those worried about encountering a rabid bat, the biologists stressed that the probability of running into one in the backcountry is so low that people shouldn’t change their outdoor activities.

As for Pipkin, the biologist said she doesn’t want people to be afraid of bats because of the incident.

“I see bats all the time, and bats are still my friends,” she said, “even after this.”

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