Death Valley: Woman picks up rabid bat outside store and is bitten

A woman who picked up a bat that was “behaving strangely” outside a Death Valley store was bitten and now is being treated for rabies exposure, the National Park Service said.

The bat was sitting on a garbage can outside the Stovepipe Wells General Store on Friday, April 29.

A store employee picked it up to move it to an area with less foot traffic, and the animal bit her through her rubber gloves.

A test determined the bat had rabies, and the employee is undergoing treatment in case she was infected.

Rabies can be fatal to humans, and it can be transmitted when the animal’s saliva gets into a wound. The standard treatment for exposure is a dose of human rabies immune globulin and a series of four rabies vaccinations over the course of two weeks.

The park service’s press release on the incident said at least nine species of insect-eating bats live in Death Valley National Park. Typically, less than 1% of bats have rabies, it said.