Arlington Heights family getting rabies shots after cat helps find bat
Julianna Cucci and her husband fell asleep last Thursday listening to a TED Talk about hallucinations. Around 2 a.m. the next morning, she thought she was having one.
After getting up for a glass of water, Cucci came back to her bedroom. There she found her husband, Marc Sporcich, swinging a pillow wildly through the air as their cat Wilson jumped around the room.
It wasn't a hallucination. Wilson had alerted Sporcich to a bat that had slipped into their home on the 400 block of North Haddow Avenue in Arlington Heights, and he was trying to stun it, or kill it, with the pillow.
Without touching it, he managed to trap the small brown bat under a box, get it into a garbage bag and put it in a crate in the garage. The couple slept on their couch and called Arlington Heights Animal Control later that morning.
"I started laughing when I saw my husband trying to catch it because it looked ridiculous," Cucci said Thursday. "It's either hilarious or tragic, and we're lucky it's not tragic."
On Tuesday, it got a lot less funny. The family got the unwelcome news that the bat tested positive for rabies.
Julianna and Marc don't think they were bitten, nor were their children, Greta, 12, Graham, 10 and Violet, 5.
Nevertheless, all are under treatment for rabies exposure. That means five rounds of shots for everyone over the next month.
Wilson, whom Julianna calls the "hero cat" since he alerted Marc to the bat, got a booster shot and is doing fine. Their other cat is under observation for 10 days at the veterinarian's office because his rabies shots were out of date. If he doesn't show symptoms he can come home soon.
The family has lived in Arlington Heights for more than a decade and has never seen a bat in the home before. Wildlife is common in the Recreation Park neighborhood where they live.
"All of this is really rare, but it's scary," Cucci said.
Bats are the primary carrier of rabies in Illinois. So far in 2016, 10 bats have tested positive for rabies, compared to 97 rabid bats counted in all of 2015.
In the past month rabid bats also have been found in Aurora and La Grange homes.
Rabies is a virus that affects the nervous system and is transmitted through a bite or transmission of saliva from an infected animal. Without treatment, the disease is usually fatal, officials said.
"Never try to approach or catch a bat, or any wild animal, you find outside. Bats and wild animals that let people approach them are often not healthy," Department of Public Health Director Nirav D. Shah said in an advisory from the agency this week.
"Instead, call your local animal control agency for recommendations on how to handle the animal."
How to help prevent the spread of rabies
• Keep vaccinations up to date for all dogs, cats and other animals you own.
• Do not touch, feed or unintentionally attract wild animals with open garbage cans or litter.
• Never adopt wild animals or bring them into your home. Do not try to nurse wild animals that are sick. Call animal control or a rescue agency for help.
• Teach children never to handle unfamiliar animals, even if they appear friendly. "Love your own, leave other animals alone" is a good principle for children to learn to reduce the risk of exposures to rabid animals.
• Look for places in your home where bats can get inside, and plug them.
• If a bat is in your home, try to cover it with a can or a bucket, if you can do it without putting yourself at risk for accidental contact or being bitten. Close the door to the room. If possible, don't shoo it outside until you speak with animal control or public health officials.
Source: Illinois Department of Public Health