How to Respond If a Live Bat Flies Into Your Home: Advice from Public Health Department in Austin, Texas

https://www.austintexas.gov/page/bats This online information at the official City of Austin website offers homeowners and apartment tenants specific guidance on logical steps they can take to safely remove a live bat from their own home or apartment unit. Bats are among the leading carriers of rabies---a virus that, if not treated promptly, is fatal in humans. A tip from this webpage: "To encourage a bat to leave on its own, open windows, turn the lights on, and leave the room, closing the door behind you and keep children and pets out of the area. "Check the area every few hours to see if the bat has departed—it may take up to 18 hours for a bat to leave a resting place." This online advice from the Austin-Travis County Health and Human Services Department at the official City of Austin website does not address the possible increased risk of a home-invasion crime perpetrated by a violent human intruder from outside during the temporary period in which windows to a room of a home or apartment are open. This webpage also advises anyone who had possible "contact with a bat" to immediately call the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department's Disease Surveillance Unit at (512) 972-5555 or their local health care provider. According to an August 2019 report in "The Austin American-Statesman" daily newspaper, in the past decade one-third of all animal-rabies cases in Texas have occurred in Central Texas: https://www.statesman.com/news/20190816/central-texas-is-hot-spot-for-rabies