Oh, How I Wish It Had Been a Sugar Glider

Sometimes I feel like I am living in some sort of sitcom.

Multi-ethnic children? Check.

Parents who are sometimes home at 2pm on a Tuesday? Check.

Ability to solve problems in 23 minutes? Sometimes.

Unusual occurances on a weekly basis that, looking over the course of a year, are highly unlikely to all happen to one family? Check.

Case in point: Friday morning started bright and early, with all four children up at 6:30am, and me kindly nudging Brandon to get out of bed with them so I could sleep for a few more minutes. In my mind, I was "kindly nudging". He may describe it as a "swift kick to the kneecaps", but he's probably being overly dramatic. One hour later, I join my family downstairs as they are eating breakfast to learn that their morning has already been an eventful one.

Apparently, at about 7am, a bat flew down the stairs, into the living room.

Let me say that again, a BAT flew DOWN the stairs at 7am.

From the UPSTAIRS, where all of our bedrooms are, where all of my sweet children were sleeping all night long, oblivious to any flying, nocturnal, potentially-rabies-carrying rodent-type animals that were possibly feasting on their flesh and transmitting fatal diseases to my BABIES.

Hot Brandon dealt with the bat situation how only Brandon would: trapped it in a tupperware* container, fed it fruit from the fridge, and released it into our backyard. (Note: I am not recieving any financial procedes from mentioning Tupperware on this blog. I'm pretty sure the Tupperware ladies would be appropriately horrified to learn that what once held leftover soup, quickly became a bat-procurement device in the hands of my bat-trapping husband. Do not try this at home.)

As my bleary-eyed, pre-coffee brain slowly processes this information, I begin to, appropriately, FREAK OUT. Google is searched. And searched again. And again. Pediatrician's office is called. County health department is called. State health department is called. Messages are left at an Infecious Disease doctor's office in the next town over, who knows more about rabies and bats than I do. It seems that the general recommendation is, when a bat is known to be in a room with a sleeping child, is for the child in question to recieve prophalaxis rabies vaccinations and immunoglobins. Since we know the bat was likely in the house overnight, and we don't know if he (or she) was in any (or all) of the bedrooms, we decided the safest course of action would be to vaccinate the whole family. All six of us.

As I have come to learn, one does not always know when one is bitten by a bat, especially if it happens while one is asleep. The bite can be almost invisible, and frankly, our children (especially Emerson, whom Houston mosquitos seem to LOVE) have their fair share of bumps, scratches, mosquito bites, etc. And apparently, a very small portion of the bat population carries rabies. RABIES, people. And if you get sick with RABIES, you die. Every time. And, that, my friends, was sufficient information to freak me out for the entire day on Friday and well into the night. The house was inspected, the upstairs torn apart, searching for bats and bat evidence (ie poop), and none was found.

I had more or less accepted my bat fate, and was planning to pursue Operation: Rabies Prophalaxis Vaccinations For All on Tuesday following the holiday weekend when the nurse from the Infectious Disease office called back at 5:45 Friday evening, telling me that the doctor would meet us at her office at 10 am Saturday morning.

Well. Okay then. Swim meets and soccer games and lunch with extended family went out the window, and the six of us piled in the van to spend three hours at the doctor's offfice. And all six of us getting multiple injections of rabies immunoglobin and round one of a four-part series of vaccinations? About as fun as it sounds.

The lesson in all of this boys and girls? If you wake up to find a bat flying around your house, around all of your precious sleeping children, and proceed to catch said bat in a tupperware container, do not release the bat into your backyard. Keep the bat, give it to animal control, so that if the animal doesn't happen to have rabies, you and your entire family will not have to endure multiple, highly expensive and painful shots, administered over a period of two weeks, and which may or may not be covered by insurance.

Tune in for next week's episode of Outnumbered when little Timmy gets stuck in the well and MacGyver rescues him with only a paperclip.

And Happy Memorial Day.