Please tell us you didn't pick it up with bare hands! Bats are wonderful and helpful creatures, but a downed bat is usually one that is diseased. They don't roost under cars. It probably fell there in flight and got run over after it died.
If you did pick it up with bare hands to dispose of it, please retrieve it (with gloved hands) and call the health department in your area to have it tested for rabies. Also, ask your son if he touched it. Make it sound like it's no big deal or he may fib about touching it.
It's too bad it died, but be assured that you didn't kill it.

Hi ccox,
No, I moved it with a shovel.....but I did put it in some ivy next to the house. I'll move it tomorrow. I didn't even think about rabies! I thought it was pretty unusual for it to roost under a car. Thanks for your input.

ccox is 100% right! A downed bat is something to be concerned about. Bats are not the rampant carriers of rabies that they are reputed to be, but a sick or dead one should be avoided carefully. Call the health department and ask them what to do.....especially if you should come across any more dead or sick bats. They have to be buried or removed so that they don't contaminate another innocent mammal (dog, cat, squirrel, chipmunk, fox, etc.).

But isn't rabies easily destroyed by stomach acid?

Generally someone/animal would get rabies from being bitten. The rabies will travel through your bloodsteam not entering the stomach. I don't think stomach acids will kill the rabies virus.

Dawn

Ummm, we had a huge colony of bats in our barn attic when I was a kid. Periodically, one or two was down and still alive. When I researched bats, I believe I read that they are gliders and not flyers, so if they do happen to get down, they can't get back up. I guess I'm not sure why they were down in the first place, but I remember this happening quite regularly. In those days, rabies was not quite as rampant as it is now, but I remember my parents being quite careful about it with the bats. Hopefully, your bat isn't diseased.

Bat are flyers. I've never seen a bat glide, for any length of time anyway.

Dawn

DH said that the rabies virus doesn't live very long on dead organisms. Is that true? DH is usually wrong about things. ;)

I know bats cannot fly from the ground on their own. Maybe I have misused the word glide. I mean glide in the sense that they cannot take off from the ground. They must drop/glide from a higher surface and then begin to flap their wings.

Vonyon I'm in agreement with your analogy about their take off. Just like a bird will occasionally hit something while flying, I would assume that even with their sonar, this can happen to a bat also. And young bats would not be as agile in the air as their parents until they learn how to manipulate their wings.
Of course use common sense with any wild creature whose behavior is out of the norm, but a gloved hand giving them a boost to the side of a tree isn't a no-no.
We seldom see a dead bat merely due to where they roost. Their corpses are consumed long before most of us would have an opportunity to see it, but we know they die of old age as well as other things.
Sorry to get so windy but bats are so maligned due to the rabies scare and many are needlessly killed. Using smarts and not force when dealing with wildlife is the key to happy harmony.

Unless the dead bat bit you, I think you'll be OK.

Elly, while you are probably correct, I have read stories about people who were not aware that a child had a bat in their bedroom, and they weren't aware that the child had been bitten because the marks can be quite small. In the story that I was reading, the child died. Hypothetically, I suppose you could get saliva on a cut on your hand from handling an infected animal as well. I know that bats are no more suseptible to rabies than other animals, but I think what people are saying is that the uncharacteristic behavior of having a bat on the ground might be reason to be cautious. I'm guessing you would agree that it is probably wise to avoid touching the dead body of any animal that had been acting uncharacteristically. Better safe than sorry with a 100% fatal illness. (Speaking of that, I was reading somewhere in the last six months of the first case of someone surviving rabies, but I can't remember the details.)

Some bats certainly can take off from the ground - vampire bats do most of their feeding from the ground (they tend to cut their prey on the toe or ankle, etc. and then follow it around, licking the blood that wells up and trying not to get stomped), and pallid and New Zealand short-tailed bats catch most of their insect prey by chasing it on the ground. I even found a report (by Merlin Tuttle, so you know you can trust it) of a bat taking off after landing on the surface of a pond!

Our common backyard bats would probably look very funny trying to get airborn from the ground, but presumably they can do it with difficulty. At the very least, a healthy bat should be able to get to a vertical surface and climb it to take off.

Catherine - it is possible that the bat was hit while driving and didn't fall off the grill until the car was stopped (like a large insect) Bats are hit all the time when they are chasing insects, think about how many bugs we hit with our cars. They also run into windows and walls more than we might think.

Perhaps the best way to think of it is that NO wild animal should ever be touched with bare hands (or bothered at all most of the time :). All animals carry diseases of some sort or another and better safe than sorry. Most North American bats have difficulty taking off from the ground. Having four in the house right now, I see it each night (it's pretty funny to watch actually) They usually find something to climb up for a better launch. This is the reason they like their houses to be high up with no obstructions below the entrance. It is possible to not be aware that one had been bitten by a bat (esp if asleep), but I can tell you first hand that most of time it hurts! I know from working with people and bats that often people just don't want to admit to doing something foolish. I'd rather look stupid than be dead!

I hope all this rambling made some sense :) here is a picture of kingbat. He's too old to release so we're his "retirement home".

[IMG]http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a251/kristysc/IM000739.jpg[/IMG]

How lucky you are to work with bats, CM! Kingbat is a cutie.

Thanks everyone.

In Toronto, we had a lot of dead bats this past summer.
Mostly in the hands of Blue Jays.

Detailed info here.

Here is a link that might be useful: CDC - Bats and Rabies

very sad. i love bats.

here is a site i enjoy in case anyone is interested in learning more about bats:

ps. i would link to a specific page but it always seems to default to the home page.

Here is a link that might be useful: bat conservation international

Hey,
I have one that seem to be dead on my screened door.
I am afraid it got its "hooks" caught on the screen net and died from cold.
It's thawing now and some flies and ladybugs get out of the space that's between the roof and the standing seem...
anyway, what should I do? throw it away, calling some environment agency (I heard about the white nose disease - but its nose is ok- maybe it arrived in VT? that would be very sad). I am aware of rabies, and will be careful not to touch it. It certainly does not seem alive though. I moved the screen and no reaction.
respect bats, without them we'd be invaded by bugs and many fruits would not exist.