It doesn’t even have to be a bite. People don’t realize that you don’t have to be bitten to contract rabies. It can come from just a scratch, or any contact of saliva with a sore or a mucous membrane without any breaking of skin.
My grand told us as children of a girl she knew who got rabies. At the end she was so ill, the oral history, claim someone put a pillow over her face and smothered her to death. We are talking 1880’s.
I took my dog to get vaccinated a couple weeks ago and got to talking about another recent rabies death with the vet. Vet said the problem with bats is that their teeth are so small and sharp, you may not know that you were bit.