by Judy Killen
WORDEN — Her family had just returned from camping for several days in a remote spot, but all it took was a trip to the driveway for a 12-year-old Worden girl to be bitten by a rabid bat.
Jordan Schoorl-Buttram told the Yellowstone County News that her daughter, Riley, walked out barefoot to the car and stepped on a bat that was lying on the driveway next to the car. It was Labor Day, Sept. 3.
Schoorl-Buttram said before that, she hadn’t seen many bats in Worden.
“Definitely not during the day and definitely not underneath the car,” she said. Seeing a bat at about 2:30 p.m. was a warning sign, since bats usually come out at night. The bat possibly fell out of a tree onto the driveway, she said.
She and her husband wasted no time.
“My husband did kill it,” she said. “We had to. It was posing a risk to all of us.”
They put the bat in an empty Pringles can, which they had on hand since they had just returned from camping. The whole family immediately went to the emergency room at St. Vincent Healthcare, where a sheriff’s deputy met them and picked up the bat.
It took two days for the positive test results to come back, but the family didn’t wait — everyone started treatment for rabies the day Riley was bitten.
“Thankfully we were able to test it,” she said. “We felt more comfortable with our family having the vaccinations.”
Riley, who just turned 12, took the worst of it, her mom said, with 10 shots — four in her foot and the rest in her arm or other locations. But no one had shots in their stomach, she said, which is what they thought would happen.
A person exposed to rabies through a bite is given rabies immune globulin near the bite as soon as possible, according to the Mayo Clinic. They also receive a series of rabies vaccine injections, which boost the victim’s immune system to help fight the rabies virus.
Untreated, rabies virus infects the central nervous system and spreads to the brain. Victims who do not receive treatment usually die within a few days of rabies infection; the disease is almost always fatal.
Schoorl-Buttram assumes the vaccinations will be expensive.
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