Last weekend, we had a bat in the house.

It was the first time in 20 years we had to deal with one of these creatures of the night hovering near the ceiling. After isolating it upstairs in my daughter's room, we took care of the problem using a large fishing net and a lot of patience, but in the back of my mind was the word "rabies." Bats are supposed to be common carriers of rabies, even though research shows only a small proportion of the bat population may be rabid. Even so, we avoided touching the bat and locked our cats in another room during the process.

The fear of rabies has prompted area health departments to drop vaccine-impregnated bait for raccoons in an effort to keep that strain of the disease out of northeastern New York. Rabies is a disease that attacks an animal's brain. According to the www.wadswoth.org Web site "Rabies History in New York State," the disease was brought to the state by European settlers in the 1700s, and until World War II, dogs were the chief spreader of the disease. Post WWII mandatory vaccinations helped control rabies outbreaks in the state. Then came fox rabies from the south and raccoon rabies from Canada in the 1990s. In 1993, there were 2,746 animal rabies cases confirmed in New York state, 85 percent of which were raccoons.

There are different strains, each more deadly to different species, such as the raccoon strain, the fox-canine strain and the bat strain.

Though horrible to think about, a rabies outbreak is nature's way of controlling burgeoning animal populations. For example, right now we have too many raccoons, many more than the habitat can hold. Hence, they invade garbage cans and ransack bird feeders looking for food. Man-made controls can be seen as road kill every summer, but this pales to the control by fur trapping, now out of favor with many who used to buy furs, so raccoon trapping is really not economically worth the effort. So, nature has to find a way, and if it isn't by rabies or autos or starvation, it could be by yet another animal disease -- distemper.

Last week I reported an outbreak of fox distemper in the Westport area and south along the Champlain Valley. Distemper spreads through mucous and contact with bodily fluids. It also can be inhaled by animals, so the disease is easily spread. Canine distemper attacks the animal's lymph glands and nervous tissue. Involuntary twitching of muscles and excessive salivation and seizures are effects of the disease. Needless to say, dogs and cats should have all their vaccinations updated, especially rabies and distemper shots.

Getting back to that bat in my house, the troubling thing is that, once again, according to "Rabies History in New York State," a 1990s study, of the 21 bat-rabies cases in the United States since 1990, 19 were from bats, but, the article points out, "Perhaps most disturbingly, in only two of the 19 cases was there a reported bite, while in another five reports it was concluded some physical contact, without an evident bite, may have occurred. In 12 cases, no physical contact was felt!"

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends treatment (shots) when physical contact with a bat occurs, or when a bat is in the same room as a sleeping person (then awakens to see it), an unattended child or a mentally disabled or intoxicated person.

I remember three years ago, a colleague of mine, on his way to a Plattsburgh convenience store late at night, accidentally kicked and was scratched by a skunk, which then got away. He went to the emergency room of CVPH for treatment and had to get a series of shots to prevent the possibility of getting rabies. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but, as he pointed out, "Better than the alternative."