> If you can, bring in the animal that bit you
Don’t they still need to kill the animal and send it’s head to the lab? At least when I was a kid you still needed the shots because it took a week to get the animal’s results back.
Don’t they still need to kill the animal and send it’s head to the lab? At least when I was a kid you still needed the shots because it took a week to get the animal’s results back.
There is a lot of difference between risk depending on the bat species, so it helps a lot if can be classified by a specialist.
As I understand it, removing and examining the brain can yield a definitive diagnosis in cases where time is of the essence. In cases where it's not immediately obvious that the animal is rabid, it can take a week or two of observation to look for more overt symptoms.
That's how my parents ended up adopting a stray dog, who later became just about their favorite pet ever. By the time they'd watched him for a couple weeks, he wasn't going anywhere. :)