A poor wayward bat found itself in the house of the WRONG FAMILY. The husband was bound to shoot it with a shot gun IN THE HOUSE and they have CHILDREN!!!

Well the wife talked him out of that and wanted to rescue the bat by throwing nerf type darts at it to make it fly. Well the bat flew into their son's bedroom and the husband threw a pillow sham over the bat and beat it with a board in an attempt to kill it.

Well...all he did was shatter the wing into many pieces.

At this point the wife decided she would defy her husband and "rehab" the bat herself without a clue about what she was doing. She took an animal with multiple fractures and offered nothing but water for 3-4 days starving it to near death. Bats have an extremely high metabolism. She came across some book that she had because she ran a day care (even more scary of a thought) and read something about bats liking milk and fed the ADULT bat milk for two days causing painful gas and stomach upset.

She also told me that she would put that outside and made it WALK on a BROKEN WING in the GRASS each morning to let the wing get covered in the morning dew so the bat would clean the wing itself since the bat would not allow her to clean it. Can you imagine not even being able to hobble and having to walk on a broken leg?

Then she finally contacted me and told me the whole story and when I asked if she was at least using gloves she said "Of course" as if it was a stupid question because she knew to use gloves. Well at least that part made me happy!

She met me in a parking lot with the bat and took it out of the container and handed it to me after stroking with NO GLOVES ON AT ALL!!! There was a glove in the cage with the bat!

She went to hand it to me and I let her place it in the container for me since she obviously had been handling it with bare hands.

I had her fill out my paperwork and when asked if the bat was touched with bare hands she proceeded to tell me that she allowed her CHILDREN to PET IT on the bat!!! And then asked if that was OK?!?!

Well I got the bat home and the bat she named HENRY was a female and the wing was 3 times bigger then it should be and very infected. She was also very emaciated.

Poor thing.

I put her on pain meds and antibiotics but ultimately had to be tested for rabies because the woman exposed herself and her family and possibly other children in her care to a potentially rabid animal.

RIP Mrs. Henry, who I renamed Princess because she deserved a much better life then what she was dealt. She tested negative for rabies, of course.

(The wrist to the right of her nose [viewing the picture] is the normal size her wrist should be. The inflamed wing to the left, held away from her body is swollen with infection.)