I like bats, but I tend to cook them before I eat them. One woman popped a bat in her mouth raw and still flapping, which, on a medical level, is highly ill-advised. However, the late Prince of Darkness would approve.
Bats are typically quite cute. They’re fluffy, little, and quite sweet in the daytime. But they are absolute hives of disease. They’ve been referred to as flying rats, and they’ve earned their title. Even today, there are diseases being found, sometimes fatal, that are linked specifically to bats.
Their saliva, blood, scratches, poop, and bites are all capable of transmitting disease. Which is why, when 33-year-old Erica Kahn felt a bat fly into her mouth, she knew she might be in trouble. Being an American, without insurance, it’s cost her tens of thousands of dollars.
Bats Don’t Have The Best Mouth Feel
It was while Kahn was shooting a video of the night sky that the bat flew into her mouth. Looking up at the stars, she had her camera out only a short distance from her face. Suddenly, she felt something come between her face and the phone.
A bat had nipped between and flown into her mouth before flapping off. “It was kind of dark out and we were out on a cliff, so I was looking down and at my camera, I didn’t really see it coming,” she told NBC News. “When it got kind of tangled between my face and the camera, it was probably just like a few seconds. But it felt like a lot longer.”
Her father, a doctor, advised her to get treatment for rabies. This is just one of the many diseases a bat can carry and transmit, especially through the mouth. But she had just previously lost her job and had not continued the medical insurance using COBRA.
As a result, her treatments in Arizona, Colorado, and Massachusetts have racked up bills of more than $21,000. She says it’s her fault for not opting for the aptly named COBRA option. But, it’s not. It’s the egregious and predatory medical systems in the US.