The Curious Incident of the Bat and the ‘Administrative State’

One night a few weeks ago I went to bed early, bothered by the oppressive heat and dismayed by that week’s political news — President Biden’s lackluster ABC News interview and Donald Trump’s claim earlier that day that he knew “nothing” about Project 2025. I was tired, too, from explaining the recent daily news broadcasts to my two daughters — one 6 and the other one 10 — including what the phrases “hush money” and “porn star” meant. My husband stayed up working, and very early the next morning a bat flew into our bedroom, through a screen door left open by accident. What happened over the next few days restored my faith in the systems in our country that keep us safe.

“Bat!” I told my husband, sleeping beside me. Though it was still dark, the thick flapping was unmistakably the sound of Earth’s only flying mammal.

“It’s one thing after another,” my husband said, clambering out of bed to grab something to catch it with.

This had happened to us before, about five years ago, which is when we learned about the need to isolate and trap any bat that invades our sleeping space for rabies testing. Though bats are beneficial insectivores, they’re also our highest risk for contracting rabies, a fatal disease carried by about 6 percent of bats tested in the continental United States.

We isolated the bat in our bedroom, making sure it couldn’t get upstairs where our daughters sleep, but it escaped through the door to the porch. To decide what to do next, we consulted every resource. Richard, my husband, read the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. I called our health care after-hours line and spoke to a nurse who also consulted the C.D.C. We called our county’s animal control center, and an officer was at our house within 10 minutes. He searched the house and garage for bats, found none, and put in a report to our county’s public health department.

“How deep a sleeper are you?” the county health nurse asked Richard when she called us on the next evening. She was assessing our risk of being bitten or scratched while we slept.