To fayerody:

Sorry if I seemed a bit touchy. I know you meant well (really I did) and in fact, I was very encouraged and reassured by your reply. I just misread part of your post and construed it as a subtle hint that my continued posting about "rabies" was "getting old" and then I got that rejected feeling. Believe me, it's nothing you said or did. I'm just a basket case, that's all. I'm a very emotional and overly sensitive person at times and with the internet (where body-language, voice inflection and other subtle "cues" are absent) it's sometimes difficult to know exactly what the other person is thinking. (I actually think you did a GREAT job of reassuring me and I DID take comfort in it, ok?

Anyway, I've been such an emotional wreck for months now that even the "ding" sound Windows makes when I bring up a copy of NotePad practically makes me jump out of my seat (and I'm not joking!). My room mate calls me and that makes me jump too.

This is'nt the first time I've freaked out over rabies, AIDS, cancer or some other horrible disease. Seeing a bat, looking up symptoms and driving myself silly with thoughts has only served to oil the gears of the great fear machine. I read a thread from a "cave-divers" forum where they said that you cannot get rabies even from bat feces or urine and so I went to the CDC's official website to confirm this since that has been one of my greatest fears (the bat peeing on me or a stray hair falling on me, etc). Here's what they have to say about this...

"People cannot get rabies just from seeing a bat in an attic, in a cave, or at a distance. In addition, people cannot get rabies from having contact with bat guano (feces), blood, or urine, or from touching a bat on its fur (even though bats should never be handled!)."

I found this "temporarily" reassuring - at least until the "what if's" start up again...ahhh!!.

PS: Yes, rabies can (in rare instances) lie dormant for several months and up to 10 years. The normal incubation period for documented cases I have actually read have been from a few weeks to about a month.