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Just now I walked into the bathroom on my floor, and there was a bat hanging on my washcloth.
Someone else took the bat outside without touching it, so that wasn't too much of a problem. But I'm wondering about my towel. It hangs in front of where the washcloth was (in my cubby), so it's possible that the bat touched the towel on its way to the washcloth. And when I used the towel earlier today, I noticed something brown and furry on my washcloth but was in too much of a hurry to investigate. That means I used the towel after the bat decided to sit on my washcloth, and didn't wash my hands again after that.
The bat was just sitting there, not doing anything out of the ordinary. And it's nighttime, but there's some light in the bathroom.
posted
About what, exactly? A bat is unlikely to be carrying disease; rabies is only found in about 1%, for instance (and wouldn't be able to be transmitted via your towel anyway).
OTOH, if it squicks you out that your towel may have been touched by a bat, go ahead and wash it.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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The bat might not have rabies, but it could have lice, mites or other parasites. Also if it was in the bathroom for a while it could have left some guano, which could potentially have other infectious agents in it. I can't think of what, but it could . But I think if you wash the towel and washcloth you should be safe. You might be concerned about how it got in your bathroom. People generally do not appreciate living with other organisms unless those organisms are invited, and a bat colony in the attic, or a whole in the wall might be problematic for other reasons.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:Don't most college campuses have bat colonies in the atic of some building?
This is news to me, but for the sake of just being really cool, I hope it's true.
Random wildlife fact about my college: there are skunks everywhere (well, maybe not everywhere....but they're around.) I didn't know Louisiana even had skunks, but I have seen 3 of them in the past year I've been living around campus. Never smelled skunk odor in the area, though.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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My brother had a bat fly onto his shoulder and try to crawl into his mouth. The theatre he was performing in is known for its bats. He finished his solo and never broke character. Thankfully, his is a bat lover and considered doing rehab not that long ago.
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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At camp, they used to tell us that you could nail bats with tennis rackets. That the bats would see them as just loops and not notice the strings.
So one time, this bat was terrorizing us, and I grabbed my racket and skittered out to the middle of the cabin... and the thing flew at me, I held the racket up as far as my arm would stretch with my eyes squeezed tightly shut and doing my best to get into a fetal position (other than the arm holding the racket). I think I missed. It was kind of terrifying.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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UF has a great, big bat house. Or it used to. They were talking about tearing it down and making more student housing or something. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Speaking of new/random wildfife on campus... my old college of Alma had a new speices of spider that lived in the white fireproofing stuff on the cielings of each dorm. Some kind of small white spider. Maybe the fact that Dow had a few of their plants upstream from us might be a factor...
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Seriously, human beings are designed to live in nature, and bats aren't designed to be dangerous to humans. I wouldn't worry. Now, Lyme disease is new, but I've only heard of deer ticks coming from deer. Or nature in general.
Not so seriously, the only down side is you didn't get to use the bat *as* the washcloth. That would be a story for the grandkids!
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Bat fur is unbelievably soft. Softer than mink. (They had a big bat exhibit at our Science Museum once. At the end there were pelts you could touch. They were tiny, but so so soft.)
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I dunno. Anyone missing from your dorm after ya had the bat ejected from the bathroom? Anyone modest enough to turn into a bat rather than letcha see them sans culotte?
The truth is out there.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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. But I think if you wash the towel and washcloth you should be safe. You might be concerned about how it got in your bathroom. People generally do not appreciate living with other organisms unless those organisms are invited, and a bat colony in the attic, or a whole in the wall might be problematic for other reasons.
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It was kind of terrifying.
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