Cafe au Bat? Woman Treated for Rabies After Finding Bat in Coffee Filter

Fox ^ | Sept 29, 2008 | AP

[RDTF]

-snip-

The Iowa Department of Public Health says the woman reported a bat in her house but wasn't too worried about it. She turned on her automatic coffee maker before bedtime and drank her coffee the next morning.

She discovered the bat in the filter when she went to clean it that night. The woman has undergone treatment for possible rabies.

Health officials say that the bat was sent to a lab but that its brain was too cooked by the hot water to determine whether it had rabies.

[RDTF]

remember this poor woman next time you think you are having a bad day!

[steve-b]

Holy Bat-Coffee!

[Yo-Yo]

Ozzie Latte

[nuconvert]

she drank bat soup?

[Tribune7]

ping

[TheZMan]

Something doesn’t add up.

[decimon]

I like a nice batte in the morning and a catpuccino for lunch.

[SlowBoat407]

Folgers, now with more bat!

[eastsider]

Doesn’t say much for her brand if she couldn’t tell the difference between her regular cup of joe and a blanched bat.

[SlowBoat407]

Wonder if she was drinking genuine cerval coffee.

[Daffynition]

Holy Coffee! I'm nothing without my morning cup 'o joe, but this poor woman ... makes me wonder if it could happen to me.

But every time I look at my Mensa bumper sticker, I think, "Batman!" So it's not out of the realm ....

[Lady Jag]

Years ago I modified to the Batman logo to look more like a Mensa M. It’s around here somewhere...

[1955Ford]

Rabies treatment costs about $8000. I don’t think you can get rabies by eating the virus.

[Right Wing Assault]

Something doesn’t add up.

Yeah, like HOW? Someone had to put it there because most coffee makers I've seen are pretty bat-proof.

[BlazingArizona]

Hail, fellow Mensan! See you in Pittsburgh.

Anyway, I bet this hapless woman just thought she had been drinking Starbucks. Or more forebodingly, did she unwittingly discover the secret of Starbucks Overroasted flavor?

[CougarGA7]

Yeah, like HOW? Someone had to put it there because most coffee makers I've seen are pretty bat-proof.

You'd be surprised. We had one get into a sealed wall. I still have no idea how it got in there. Unfortunately for it, that wall was used in a blast mitigation test.

[Kirkwood]

Excuse me. Is that a bat crawling up your dress?

[Dominnae]

I don’t think you can get rabies by eating the virus.

You absolutely can contract the virus via mucous membranes in the mouth.

In fact, the more proximal to the brain, the more dangerous the contact.

Rabies virus travels along the nerve pathways to the central nervous system to the brain. Once you're synptomatic, there's a 99.99+% mortality rate.

Potential contact with rabies vector species that cannot be captured, or tested - to mucous membranes, open wounds, cuts, or ANY kind of a bite require post exposure treatment.

In this case, consider that the bat may have been in the water before the maker turned on. The coffee maker does not boil the water. Just close to it.

If the bat was rabid, the viability of the virus in heated water is not something I would gamble my life on.

[Billthedrill]

I just hate it when that happens. BTT.

[Dominnae]

because most coffee makers I've seen are pretty bat-proof.

They only need a crack or crevice the width of a pencil or less.

I would say a bat in a house, in a panic, would have smacked into the maker looking for a place to land.

They look for places 4' and up because they can't easily take off from the floor.

I could see a bat dislodging the hinged lid and climbing in.

The darkness and warmth from the electronics would be very attractive.

I've taken lots of bats out of houses, you'd be totally surprised at the unlikely places they will find for themselves.