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August 27, 2008
Rabies Vaccination: Dose 1
I love bats. LOVE. Lovelovelove. They're awesome. Adorable. Useful (some bats in my area eat up to a thousand mosquitoes in a single hour when feeding!). So I decided I wanted to do bat rehabilitation someday -- that's where people bring you injured bats and you nurse 'em back to health and set 'em free again.
Well. A few weeks ago, I went to a bat day at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum and met a couple bat rehabbers, and they told me they really need someone in the Santa Clara area who can do rehabbing, and that it's easy to learn -- I don't even need to take formal classes or anything!
But I have to have a rabies preventative vaccine to handle the bats.
Getting the vaccine has been a huge production. It cannot be ordered by doctors, only by county health departments. My insurance will happily cover it 100% (important, because it is a three-shot series and each shot costs $270!)... but only in-network. Out of network, it's only 70% covered. And of course the county health department is not in-network. So I will have to appeal to get the remaining 30% covered.
I found the county health department for Santa Clara County and went down there this morning to get my shot. There is apparently a shortage of the vaccine, but since I'm going to be working with wild animals (as opposed to getting it cos I'm a paranoid camper or something), they said I could get it. Woo.
I have to get another shot next Wednesday and a third shot two weeks after that. And THEN I can actually start learning how to take care of lil' bats! Yay!
File under: Bats
Posted by Ealasaid at August 27, 2008 11:24 AM
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Comments
$270 a dose? Sheesh. I remember when I got the rabies vaccine, and it was just something we had done for the whole family in one go as a general precaution. (I suspect it's out of date by now.) I'd been under the impression at the time that it was downright cheap, but maybe we just had really good insurance.
Have fun taking care of the bats! There's a whole bat-fest going on here in Austin this coming weekend that looks to be entertaining. I am all for animals that eat the nasty nasty mosquitos around the river.
Posted by: Fade Manley at August 27, 2008 12:10 PM
That is beyond cool.
I would love to be involved in something like this... but there isn't anyway I could accommodate an animal other than Fluffy in my tiny apartment.
Posted by: Fester at August 27, 2008 08:33 PM
Sooooo BATMANIA will ensue!?!? I couldn't resist! A Batman Joke! Bwhahahaha!
Sorry I really couldn't resist. Hope the bats are fun!
Posted by: keith at September 4, 2008 03:56 AM
So, given that you have now posted pix of SOMEONE in white gloves, handling bats, may we presume that you have completed your course of 3 rabies vaccine injections and begun batting practice?
Posted by: Guy at September 11, 2008 03:28 PM
Fade - yep, $270. Not cool. After insurance it'll be something like. $81, unless I can bully them into covering the rest of it. You must've had great insurance! And man, some day I am going to make it out to Austin and see the awesome bats. I passed through very, very briefly last year, but didn't get to see any batsies. Sigh.
Fester - they take up almost no space from what I hear, but last I heard, you had almost no space already. :)
Keith - yeah, let the batjokes begin! I'm already calling myself the bat lady...
Dad - nope, those were from the bat day I went to where I met the gals who will be training me (check the date taken). Sigh. But I'll be handling bats this weekend YAY! I hope to get some photos. :)
Posted by: Ealasaid at September 22, 2008 02:46 PM
Graphics from works 