Dear Ferret Folks-
 
The following is a repost of a true, gruesome story that happened to me,
to my late lamented Sabrina the Bat-Biter, and her Bat.  We were all
INSIDE the house, minding our own business, when this happened.  So we
were safe, right?  THINK AGAIN.  I drag this one out of the archives
because of all the "it can't happen to me, I keep 'em inside" discussions
that have been going on lately.  Well, we were inside, too.  The problem
was, so was the BAT, after it flew through the window.
 
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Oh, yes Dear Ferret Folks- Our Fuzzies can be deadly effective little
hunters, as Kim's post illustrated.  Several years ago, while I was
napping, I was awakened abruptly by the most horrid noises you can
possibly imagine.  Piercing shrieks, scrabbling and scratching sounds,
thumps, the sound of things being overturned.  My Ferret Mommy Radar
instinctively knew that weasels were involved.
 
I ran through the house to the sound of a battle being waged.."Oh god,
oh, god let them be O.K.!) I found Sabrina engaged in mortal combat
with...something.  She was rolling on the floor with something small,
dark, fuzzy, and wounded in her mouth.  "A mouse!", I thought.  A mouse
that was shrieking, bleeding and ...flapping?  Flapping as in wings?
That weren't no oooordinary mousie, oh no, it was much worse than that.
It had a little gargoyle face, tiny fangs, and membranous wings.  It was
a BAT.  A small brown BAT.  One I was going to have to remove from
Sabrina's face with my BARE HANDS.
 
Rabies.  The Black Death of Europe.  Thoughts of contagion and vile,
black, dripping disease flashed through my mind.  Bat cooties.  What
if it bit me?  What if Sabrina wouldn't let go and I had to wrench it
from her bloody fangs by force?  In the end that's just what happened.
Sabrina was NOT about to part with her prize willingly.  Nope.  She
evidently had plans to mount it's dark Satanic little head on a plaque
and keep the trophy on her cage wall.  Imagine tearing sounds.
 
I telt terrible for the bat, at the same time I was afraid of it.  By
then it was pretty clear that its' carefree days of wolfing down its'
own weight in mosquitos were over.  It was no more.  It had ceased to
be.  This was an ex-bat.  Sabrina was sooooo pissed at me.  Especially
during the several weeks she was quarantined in her cage after the
animal control officer came.
 
Evidently the bat was not rabid, although I destroyed the possibility of
testing it by placing it's tattered little body in a Zip-Loc and freezing
it in anticipation of his arrival, hence the quarantine.  Freezing
destroys the virus.  Fortunately, some months before, some paranoid
impulse lead me to have my vet vaccinate all of my mammalian pets.  I
still had the metal tag and papers.  Thus Sabrina did not suffer the fate
of the late, lamented Kodo.  Nobody cut her head off, then decided she
was fine.
 
Remember this, the next time you might be tempted to say "But my pets
never leave the house, I don't need to vaccinate them..." I later tried
to sicc Sabrina (henceforth known as Sabrina the Bat-Biter) on the mice
in my Mother's pantry to no avail.  Sabrina only hunts on her own terms,
evidently.  She has always been difficult.  She likes her mice with
wings.  Sincerely, Alexandra in Massachusetts
 
Switch the Kit: "What did it taste like, Aunt Sabrina?"
Sabrina: "Chicken." [Posted in FML issue 3669]
[Posted in FML issue 4298]