BILLINGS, Mont. — Montana health officials are seeing a spike in rabies cases. Thirteen bats have tested positive for rabies in Montana this year.
Riverstone Health says bat encounters are up this year. The county has tracked 11 incidents so far — eight of them involving human contact. That is already double the human interactions reported last year.
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Stacie Pannell, communicable disease program manager at RiverStone Health, said an "interaction" does not always mean a bite. It can include a scratch — or even waking up in a room with a bat.
"Were they bitten? Were they scratched? We don't know," Pannell said Friday. "After somebody has an interaction with a bat, we recommend post-exposure prophylaxis for rabies.
That treatment is extensive. Pannell described what it involves.
"They get immune globulin to start with. It's called HRAIG, or Human Rabies Immune Globulin, and the rabies vaccination. And then they get that rabies vaccination again on day three, seven, and fourteen," Pannell said.
Pannell believes more people are reporting these encounters because awareness around rabies is growing.
"I do think that it's made people more aware that bats do pose, or can pose, a danger for their health," Pannell said.
Riley Buttram knows firsthand how painful that treatment can be. A bat bit her during a camping trip in 2018, and she describes the experience vividly.
"It just felt like they were sticking a toothpick up my foot," Buttram said. "It was horrible."
The bite happened in seconds. She reached into a car to grab a jacket.
"I couldn't get it from one side of the car, so I went to the other side and grabbed it, and then I looked down and there was a bat, and it like bit me on my foot," Buttram said.
She barely felt the bite, but she knew she could not ignore it.
"We went to the hospital, and for precaution, they gave me seven shots in my foot because that's where it bit me," Buttram said.
That was just the start.
"Two of my thighs and two of my arms, and then they sent the bat off to get tested, and it did have rabies," Buttram said.
The treatment was so intense that medical staff had to physically restrain her.
"They had to hold me down because the needles are so long," Buttram said.
Eight years later, Buttram still remembers it clearly — and she feels for those in Yellowstone County now going through the same thing. Her message is simple: don't take the risk.
"If we wouldn't have kept the bat, we would have been like, 'Oh, okay, maybe she didn't get bit.' I would have gotten rabies. I could have died," Buttram said.
