- Most people probably wouldn’t take this kind of event as well as this lady.
You’ve surely heard the urban legend about how we swallow 10 or so spiders while sleeping over our lives. Fortunately, that’s not true. Most animals want nothing to do with your gaping, snoozing maw.
This bat obviously didn’t get that memo, though.
Dr. Krista Edelman had a nightmarish wake-up recently. Her harmless, if a bit unsettling, dream of a tiny mouse crawling into her mouth got really creepy when she jolted awake, and the mouse was still there.
Only, it wasn’t a mouse. It was a bat that had been cohabiting in Edelman’s historical Virginia property, unbeknownst to its human owners.
After pulling the bat out of her mouth and screaming for a while, Edelman and her husband caught the bat. Then she did the rational thing and went to work as if nothing had happened.
Eventually, she realized that she could’ve caught who knows what kind of disease from the bat. She fetched the flappy creature and rushed to the ER.
Fortunately, the bat tested negative for rabies, as did Edelman. Yet she was given rabies vaccinations, just to be safe.
I couldn’t find out what became of the bat. But I do bet it was just as shaken by the whole thing as Edelman.
Strange Dream
Edelman lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she works as a gastroenterologist. With her husband and 6-year-old daughter, they share an almost 100-year-old house – a beautiful but not completely airtight structure.
Edelman found out about her home’s penetrability the hard way on August 20. She detailed her harrowing experience in a video she posted on social media and quickly went viral.
That night, she was sleeping peacefully. However, she was having a strange dream about a cute little mouse.
“I was dreaming that there was a little mouse trying to get into my mouth,” she told WWBT.
In her dream, Edelman reached into her mouth to pull the mouse out. Sure enough, she grabbed a soft ball of fur between her jaws.
Then she woke up. Much to her shock, she realized she still had something in her mouth.
“I thought I was still dreaming. And then when I touched the hair on its back and kind of pulled it out and then looked at it,” she said.
In her hand was a small bat.
Have Bat, Will Work
Understandably, Edelman freaked out. As the bat flapped away to a better hiding place, her screams woke up her husband.
Together, they quickly searched online for what they should do in this situation. Based on the vast majority of suggestions, they captured the bat, with Edelman’s husband tracking the critter down while she kept an eye on their daughter.
Whew, what a way to wake up. With the bat caught, Edelman decided she’d do the reasonable thing that most people would, given the circumstances.
She gave her mouth a thorough wash with soap, and then she went to work.
No Harm Done
While at work, however, Edelman was told that she was at a serious disease risk. Whatever the bat was carrying could’ve been transmitted to her while it was in her mouth, and being so close to her brain, any disease could progress very quickly.
So, Edelman fetched the bat and went to the ER at St. Mary’s Hospital, where she works. One of the doctors who treated her was Aram Landsee.
“To actually have a bat in the mouth, assuming that’s a mucous membrane and a bat is crawling in with its head or its mucous membranes … It’s a pretty concerning exposure,” Landsee said, commenting on the rarity of Edelman’s encounter.
The doctors took blood samples of the bat and sent them out for rabies analysis. Meanwhile, they gave Edelman a rabies vaccination to be on the safe side.
Fortunately, the bat’s results came back negative. With that, her colleagues declared Edelman to be in the clear.
Overall, Edelman came out of the experience surprisingly well. The doctors found no bite marks in her mouth and she didn’t catch any bugs from the bat. All she has to do is get over the mental shock.
And she seems to be doing fine on that front, too, considering how she recalls the feeling of having the bat in her mouth.
“It was kind of soft. So, it wasn’t painful at all. It was just a little bit unsettling,” she said.