Man may have been bitten by rabid bat

VANCOUVER — Time is running out in the search for the person who stuffed a live, hissing, rabid bat into a camping pot before writing a chalk warning about it and then leaving the creature on a Lost Lagoon park bench.

Since rabies symptoms can develop in humans bitten by rabid bats in as few as nine days, Vancouver Coastal Health is hoping to find the man so he knows he may need to be vaccinated against rabies.

The man wrote a message on a bench at the south side of Lost Lagoon, saying he was sorry he had accidentally trampled on the bat and didn’t know what else to do, so he put it in a pot and shut the lid.

Patricia Thomson, executive director of the Stanley Park Ecological Society, said volunteers had a chance encounter with the unidentified man but didn’t get any information from him.

Park rangers contacted the Wildlife Rescue Association so the bat could be safely removed for testing. As is the protocol with such recoveries, the bat was destroyed last week so its brain could be sent to a Canada Food Inspection Agency laboratory in Lethbridge. The lab tests confirmed rabies.

The rabies incubation period for humans who have been in contact with such bats is anywhere from nine to 42 days, which means the mystery bat handler should get vaccinated immediately if he had sufficient contact with it. The bat was discovered a week ago.