Politics & Government

Rabid Bats Found in Lake County

Health Department advises residents to beware of bats behaving strangely.

A bat killed by two cats in a Lake Villa home tested positively for rabies on May 20 and another bat found outside a Waukegan dog kennel also tested positively for rabies on May 23. The cats were given rabies booster shots and the dogs were determined to not have had contact with the bat, according to a news release from the Lake County Health Department.

The Lake County Health Department is urging residents to avoid contact with bats.

"We are urging people to be careful. Rabies are something you don’t want to mess around with because it's almost always fatal," said Mike Adam, senior biologist for the Lake County Health Department.

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Leslie Piotrowski, Lake County Health Department spokesperson, said bats are most active between June and September. She pointed out that bats are beneficial.

“Bats have beneficial qualities. They eat mosquitoes and destroy crop-eating pests. We are not encouraging people to take down their bat houses,” Piotrowski said.

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Adam said the rabid bats are both resident bats, such as big brown and little brown bat, as well as transient bats.

The health department is alerting residents to avoid contact with bats and to report bats acting in an unusual manner, such as flying in daylight or lying on the ground. Don’t chase away a bat if it gets inside your home because it may need to be tested for rabies. Call the Health Department at (847) 949-9925 with concerns about bats.

Illinois Rabies Statistics

In 2010, 13 bats in Lake County tested positive for rabies, which is six percent of the 212 Lake County bats that were submitted to the state laboratory for testing, according to the news release. In Lake County, bats are the only animals that have tested positive for rabies for more than 20 years.

Adam pointed out that the percentage of bats testing positively has remained the same in Lake County and across Illinois, at about 6 percent. He said while there are more cases of rabid bats, that is due to more testing for rabies.

"There has been more of a public message to report bats, particularly in homes. The more you look, the more you find," Adam said.

In 2010, there were 22 bats that tested positively for rabies in McHenry County and 18 in Cook County, according to rabies statistics on the Illinois Department of Health website. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health website, bats are the predominant animal in Illinois to carry rabies. In 2010, 117 bats tested positively for rabies in Illinois, which is an increase over prior years. The last time there was an outbreak of rabies in animals other than bats in Illinois was in 2005, when six skunks, one fox and one cow tested positively.  So far this year, six bats and one cow have tested positively for rabies in Illinois. The cow was in Macon County in central Illinois.

Rabies is almost always fatal affecting the nervous system of humans and other mammals. People can get rabies from the bite of a rabid animal or by coming into contact with the saliva from a rabid animal via nose, mouth, eyes or an open wound.

Dealing with a Bat in the House

If a bat gets in your house, the health department suggests closing the doors to the room where the bat is located and keeping people away. Trained animal wardens will remove the bat at no cost to the resident or refer the caller to the appropriate jurisdiction. Health officials are urging residents to avoid touching, hitting or destroying bats. When dead bats are submitted to state labs for rabies testing, they need to be undamaged.

 Warn Children to Avoid Bats

The health department also suggests that parents make sure children know that they should never touch a bat that is lying on the ground. The bat may not be dead, just ill, and could bite.  Pet owners should be on the alert for bats near their homes, because pets that spend time outdoors can easily come into contact with these animals. If a rabid animal bites a pet, the pet may, in turn, bite a person, transmitting rabies to that individual.  Rabies can be avoided in pets by vaccination, which is why a rabies vaccination is required for dogs and cats.

 Home Bat-Proofing

The health department advises that bats can be excluded from living quarters by covering chimneys and vents with half-inch hardware cloth screens, by installing draft guards beneath doors, and by sealing any other possible access routes, especially around screen doors, windows and plumbing. 

Bats potentially can enter holes as small as three-fourths inch diameter. They do not chew insulation or otherwise make new holes. These potential entries must be covered or plugged.  For small crevices, silicone caulking may help. 

If a large bat colony must be evicted from a wall or attic, careful observations should be made at dusk to find entry holes (also sometimes recognizable by stains around used holes or crevices or by droppings beneath). The holes should be plugged after the bats emerge to feed (which they do during evening hours), according to the news release.

 


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