U.S. doctor wakes up with a bat in her mouth: post about the incident gets 45,000 reposts

Gastroenterologist Krista Edelman from Richmond, Virginia, USA, woke up at around 6:00 a.m. on August 20 to find a bat in her mouth. Her account of the incident on Instagram received more than 45,000 reposts, and doctors reminded the public that any contact with a bat is a reason to seek medical help because of the risk of rabies.

According to Edelman, she dreamed of a field mouse crawling into her mouth. In her sleep, the woman reached toward her face and felt something soft — only to realize that she had grabbed the folded wings of a real bat. Her scream woke her husband, who put on winter gloves and caught the animal with a net, placing it in a bucket so it could be submitted for testing.

The doctor did not feel a bite and found no marks on her skin, so she initially just rinsed her mouth and went to work. She went to the hospital in the evening after speaking with an infectious disease specialist: contact with the mucous membranes of the mouth is more dangerous than a bite on the arm or leg because the virus is closer to the brain. At St. Mary's Hospital's emergency department, she began post-exposure prophylaxis — four doses of the vaccine plus immunoglobulin. After the second dose, testing of the captured bat showed that it did not have rabies, and the course was discontinued.

Adam Landsey, the medical director of the emergency department, explained why medical professionals do not wait for a visible bite: bats have very small teeth, the puncture may go unnoticed, and no wound may remain at all. Under CDC guidelines, a visible wound is not required to start prophylaxis: once symptoms appear, rabies is almost always fatal.

Julia Murphy, the state's public health veterinarian, listed the reasons to seek medical attention: a bite, direct contact when there is no certainty that a bite did not occur, as well as waking up in a room with a bat, especially if a child was sleeping nearby.

At the same time, Murphy stressed that bats do not need to be exterminated: they are beneficial to nature, and the proportion that are infected is small. In Virginia, an average of about 25 rabid animals are confirmed each year; in 2026, there have been 19 so far. Reports of encounters have increased compared with usual, but this is probably related to increased attention to the topic rather than the spread of the disease.