07 24 25 Denver Animal Protection Sgt Noah Imai bats test positive for deadly rabies

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is Colorado's Morning News. Denver reporting its first two
rabies positive bats of the year. One was found in
the Sloan's Lake neighborhood on July eighth, and another in
the Highlands on the seventeenth.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
So I do families and pet owners need to keep
in mind when it comes to rabies concerns. Joining us
now on the KWA Common Spirit Health Hotline is Sergeant
Noah Emi with the Denver Animal Protection Sergeant Emin, thank
you so much for your time this morning.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, good Marning, thanks for having me tell us.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
A little bit more about these two confirmed cases that
we have in Denver, and generally when we see a
couple cases pop up in the last month, does that
mean there's likely more rabid bats in Denver as of
right now?

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
You know, we see these kind of cases every summer
that you know, bats are outflying, eating insects, taking care
of their young, and so it's just natural that there's
going to be more run ins with people and pets.
And so one of those situations a dog got ahold
of a of a bat, and that's a pretty common scenario.
You know, we also get cats and kids grabbing bats.

(01:01):
I think the other one was a bat that was
flying around in the home and kind of was just
found in the bathroom. Its own point, but we always
end up finding them in the weirdest places this time
of year. They're out and about, kind of crawling around
looking for places to sleep and get cool. So there's
a lot of run ins.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
How concerned on a level of one to five, should
we as humans be concerned about the rabies peace and
for the animals? I imagine it's a higher concern for
the animals and necessarily the humans.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Right, Yeah, you know, we worry about our pets coming
into contact with reservoir species of species that are carrying rabies,
like bats and skunks and raccoons, some of the most
common in the Metro area. And you know that's why
we get our pets vaccinated. It seems so second nature

(01:49):
and something that we don't even think about. But of course,
the rabies virus is fatal if we're infected by either
wildlife or if wildlife infects our pets and our our
pets infect us. So it's something that's incredibly rare, but
also fatal if it's not handled quickly, and if we're
not taking precautions.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Sergeant Emai, how can you tell when a bat is rabid?
Or is this a situation where anytime you have a
run in with a with a bat, it's something that
you should take more seriously and just go get checked
out and see.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, well, raybe this is transmitted through the saliva of
some of these reservoir species, and so you really should
be concerned if you're bitten by a bat. And of
course bat have these tiny needlelike teeth, and so you know,
we get a lot of cases, kind of scary stories
of people waking up and finding a bat in their
bed or sometimes in a toilet, and so you know,

(02:43):
some people don't even know that they've been bitten. So
you want to take extra precautions if you have a
cat that you that know, you know, is known to
play with animals and would kind of get into trouble
that way. Definitely, if you see a bat in your house, uh,
and you don't know that your animals had contact, you
want to take those extra precautions and give your local
animal control a call to pick them up and get

(03:05):
them tested if we think that there's exposure.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Sergeant, how common are bats in Denver and in Colorado?
And I always think the people think they hang out
in caves, probably do in dark places, But how common
And are we seeing more of them for whatever reason?
Is it with change in the environment and everything else,
we're seeing more bats, are hearing more about encounters with them?

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, you know, I would say over my ten years
in this career, I wouldn't say that this is a
necessarily higher year in Denver for reported bat exposure. But
you know, we do see them in older neighborhoods where
the homes are made out of stone and there might
be more cracks between the route lines. Typically older buildings

(03:46):
have a lot more of those crevices that that's like
the hide in And so definitely a big part of
prevention is making sure that we're seiling up the outsides
of our home. But you know, this is something that
we find in older neighborhoods, not so much in in
new building areas.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
He's with Denver Animal Protection. It's Sergeant Noah Emi. Thank
you so much for sharing this information today.