Flightless Bird: Rabies

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now. I have to be honest with you here, I feel about 30-35 more scared in America than I did in New Zealand. Maybe this says as much about my timid New Zealand brain as it does about America, but I dunno. Things seem scarier here.

A tourist is shot and killed on a popular hiking trail in Highland Park, taken out in one shot by a rifle-wielding gunman hiding in faraway bushes.

More recently, I discovered another fear. This is a voice memo I recorded on my phone. Okay, so I was in the park and a squirrel bit me.

Ugh.

We don't have squirrels in New Zealand, so in my mind, they're basically just a Disney character. They're there to be cute and entertain.

Look, I'm not a boy. I mean, I'm not a squirrel, I'm a boy.

A human boy, not a real squirrel. But life isn't a Disney film. It's full of pain, suffering. And for me, squirrel bites. I went home and googled what to do if a squirrel bites you.

Itch.

Who'd ya?

Oh, my god, you're rabid.

Oh my God, you're rabid wasn't quite the words my doctor used, but the sentiment was similar. And thus began my journey into the world of rabies, a virus that has a 100 mortality rate in give or take 1. So check the attic for bats and your skin for tiny bite marks, because this is the rabies episode.

I am mad at you.

What already?

Because so many things happen beyond our control in life. Yet here you are putting your hand out to. Probably pet, we'll get into this, but I have a feeling to pet a squirrel and not knowing. But should know that that's a horrible idea and that you will get bit.

You know, who told me that beforehand? Fucking no one? Why? No one told me that these animals that you have are dangerous, it's not animals that we have.

I grew up scared of rabies. At some point people tell you don't touch that animal, that you don't know this stray animal, it could have rabies.

All right, so that's something you're told by your parents.

Somebody told I don't know, I assume it was my parents, but yes, it's something you grow up knowing. Don't touch random animals because they could have a disease.

Can I just for my own defense? We don't have rabies in New Zealand, it doesn't exist, and so it's not a danger we have in America. I'm walking around. I almost sometimes feel like when I leave the house, I might not come back alive. Because again, that sniper rifle incident happened near my friend's house. Is that going to get me? Rabies is everywhere here.

It's terrifying. Well, first of all, first of all, first of all. After this happened, my friend got bit by a dog. She went to the doctor and she was like, What about rabies? Basically? they were like, rabies isn't really a thing anymore.

Right, what you said is what I've heard as well. The main thing I learned about this, and especially when I made the documentary, is that. Everyone has a different idea about rabies, how prevalent it is. Who's got it, what can happen? But the thing is okay. I found out some facts about rabies, I wrote these down because I didn't want to forget them. Rabies causes 59,000 deaths worldwide each year.

Okay, that's a lot, that's a lot, but-.

40 of which are in children under the age of 15.

Exactly.

I've never heard of a case in New Zealand, okay, but my point is America has rabies and it's a real problem.

Did you look up how many cases in America per year?

I did, I'll get into this, okay, look, this is going to be an intense episode, I warn you about that.

I know to watch for foaming at the mouth, and I know that my sister has shots for it.

Why did she get them?

She's a vet.

I actually don't really know anything about it, other than like my old dog, like I had to make sure he had a vaccine for it.

Oh, it's very scary, you can die from it. definitely, dogs will die from it if they're not vaccinated.

If you are bit by a rabid animal, there's a prophylactic shot that you can get. Very painful, goes right into the abdomen. It's reported to be really a terrible injection to get. I know it's really bad, and I know that it's very painful to get the injections if you get it.

Can you tell me anything about rabies?

Well, you die.

I love that guy.

Oh my God, wait, I forgot about the foaming at the mouth. Yeah, that's always a fear. I didn't know you could take rabies shots preventatively.

Yeah, you can, so you can.-.

Like a tetanus shot.

Kind of, yeah, you can get them before you travel to certain countries, it's recommended that you get them, vets will get them.

But it sounds like it's fucking miserable to get.

So that is a bit of misinformation, which I'm going to clear up in the doc, but it's not in the abdomen.

Right?

No, that's like this thing. And I remember I texted Rob and Rob said, Horrific.

That's what I always heard my mom was like, it's shots on the stomach that are really painful.

So the shots, and I know this because it fucking happened to me. They give your butt, your arms, they spread it around, but it's not like straight into the abdomen.

Maybe it used to be.-.

Yeah, this was 20 years ago, right?

Okay, I'm going to read this exchange. Okay, it was to me and Rob. Tuesday, January 3rd, 1147 a.m.

Yeah, nothing, yeah, nothing.

Yeah, David says. A squirrel nipped my finger yesterday. Is that a doctor's visit? do you think? just a scratch, not blood?

You both summarized the vastly different points of view. I was getting in general when this happened, and one half was like, don't worry about it, the other half was like, No, go and see a doctor.

I also got very armchair expert on it because then my next text was, especially if a squirrel was close enough to bite you. That's not consistent with squirrels, so it might have something weird like mange, so you definitely need to check. And I don't know anything about squirrels or mange or rabies or any of it. But still.

Well, I appreciate you both replying. you were a bit late, Monica, but you did reply and you cared like you really were.

I said, Let me know if you need a ride anywhere.

Yeah, and that did put me into a bit of a cause. I was not going to do it. But then you and a few other people said you definitely should see a doctor. And that's what kind of put me into the spin. So I'll fire up the documentary because I tried to kind of capture what all this is like, and yeah, it's a real journey.

Now this girl right here, she's walking, she's texting and goes whoop straight into the fountain.

It all went down recently at a mall in Pennsylvania. This isn't particularly great. I thought cutting my walk short to go home and throw some sanitiser on the puncture wound, at least it was a clean entry. Squirrel teeth are sharp. I googled squirrel bites and various websites made it very clear I should ring my doctor.

Hi, this is Courtney.

Hey Courtney, it's David. How are you?

Hi there, good. how are you?

I wasn't the only one in America who'd recently found themselves thinking about rabies, and Courtney in Michigan was one of them. Each year, about 60,000 Americans have to get what's called post-exposure prophylaxis treatment. PEP Pep after being bitten by an animal like a raccoon, a skunk, a bat or a fox. Pep consists of two things the rabies vaccine and a dose of human rabies. Immune globulin, which is a human blood serum that kicks the body's immune system into overdrive before the vaccine kicks in.

So I live in the main floor of a house and would often wake up in the night, usually between like two and four, hearing rustling in the walls.

Her housemate thought they had birds in the wall, pigeons or something she had moved in. During summer and during fall, in the winter, the noises in the walls went away. But then last summer, the rustling was back.

And so again, I thought they were just birds and never saw any sign of anything in my living space, so I wasn't too concerned about it. But it also is very creepy to hear rustling in your walls behind your bed in the middle of the night. One of these nights that this happened, I went into my living room and thought, I just can't hear these sounds anymore. I'm going to go into the living room, turn on the TV and just get away from it.

In the early hours of the morning, Courtney dozed off.

And then suddenly there was something flying above my head and I didn't have lights on, I just had the TV on. So there's also the shadow of that happening. So I grabbed a cushion and threw it over my head, thinking about what to do next. I was very scared because there's a bat flying around.

That's a good technique.

Yeah, I felt like that would at least protect me from it. Closed the door and then I still heard the rustling noise in the wall. So that's when I figured out there's more than one, for sure.

Courtney had been living with a family of bats that came back every summer and they'd just been formally introduced. That morning. She started talking to friends and texting, just like what I was doing, and her friends started saying, Oh my God, Courtney, you need to have a rabies shot. She called the health department with her problem.

They said, Because you were asleep in a room with a bat, there's a potential that you had exposure. So we would recommend that you get the rabies vaccine. And I just assumed that I would then be going to the health department to get a shot there. I was like, Okay, great.

With those words ringing in her ears, Courtney headed to the ER. She'd read up about rabies and it was all bad. For one thing If you get rabies, you die. But before that, there's vomiting, violence, uncontrolled emotions and a crippling fear of water. Yeah, rabies makes you terrified of water.

They're like, we have to give you six injections. We'll give you one in your arm, and then we'll do two in each thigh and then one in your butt. And there were two nurses and they're like, we have two of us, so that we can give you the two in your thighs at the same time. And I was like, Oh, like they do for babies, I was like, Great, I'll take it.

With the rabies vaccine, there are multiple shots. You get the first dose, then you go back on day three for another day seven and day 14. That's four separate admissions to the E.R. And the price, it starts to soar.

And I said, Oh, do you think you'll have less patients today because it's Labor Day? And she said, Actually, I just have you and six other rabies patients. She said. Yeah, there's been a lot of bats recently.

The great thing about all this, Courtney is alive and well. She doesn't know if the bat she was living with had rabies. She doesn't even know if the bat had bitten her that night, and that's the thing with rabies, you just don't know.

I thought, Oh, it's going to be like $1,000, which was a lot to me.

$1,000 would have been getting off lightly. All those ER visits meant it was going to be a lot more than that.

In my head, I was thinking I was going to be getting like one shot, so hopefully it wouldn't be anything outrageous. I'm still unclear. I pulled out all my bills this morning to see what cost what, and it's still a little bit unclear.

So how much did you end up getting charged? how much out of pocket was it for you?

So the total is $3,430.

Right, and that's with your insurance paying the rest of it.

That's with my insurance, yeah.

$3,430 U.S. dollars, that's just over $5,000 New Zealand dollars, I thought to myself.

I am worried, too, that it will happen again, and then what will I do? I live in Holland, Michigan, and we're very well known for having an abundance of squirrels, and particularly black squirrels. They're everywhere.

This whole thing has had a big effect on her life. She's on a payment plan to pay the hospital as a social worker, she's not making giant megabucks. She says. She is making good progress on it. And more sleep has been a problem since the bats in the walls.

So this all happened in August, I moved back in September. I made it a New Year's resolution to sleep with the lights off because I have been sleeping with the lights on.

Oh right, so you were keeping the lights on while you slept, just as a precaution to keep the bats out.

More so, I was just trying to think of what would be the least traumatic way to see another bat, and I felt like full light was the answer.

So, yeah, as I was trying to figure out whether to get my shots. I was sort of starting to talk to people sort of in research mode that have had this happen to them. And yeah, a lot of Americans get bit by things. Or the thing with bats is that if you're in a room with a bat, you're not going to wake up if a bat bites you. Because it's got little needle teeth.

But you don't feel it.

No, and so you're in this weird situation where if you've been living with a bat. The advice from everyone is to get a rabies shot because it's just not worth the risk. But the frustrating thing is, there's a chance you weren't even bitten.

Right, and then you're paying all that money and pain.

And rabies is bad. I went through what happens to you. There's three stages, the first one happens within one to three days. This is in animals.

Rabies is a hypochondriac's wet dream, really. I have a feeling I'm going to think I have rabies a lot. And unfortunately for me, I can just go to the doctor and say I believe there was a bat.

Yeah, around me.

There could have been a bat around me and I could have been bit and I'm going to need a rabies shot.

I had this thought in my head, I got bitten. I thought if I don't get the injection within a couple of weeks, I'll know if I'm going to die. And that kind of made it okay. Like within two weeks, I'll be either in the clear.

If you didn't have symptoms.

Yeah, or it's going to be bad for me. What I found out is that rabies can sit in your system for up to a year. No, and so I was thinking, Okay, so I ignore this, right? And in a year's time, or over a year, the rabies will basically get into my nervous system.

It's too late.

It did have rabies, and it's too late at that point, you're dead and there's nothing you can do about it. So in my mind, it was almost better if it was over quick. Unless I'd know if I was going to die or not. But not knowing if I was going to die in a year just seems so much more stressful. Do you know what I mean?

I do.

The anticipation, I guess, builds and builds. But also, I'm not okay with you being just willing to die over. Sticking out your hand in Griffith Park to get a selfie of you and a squirrel. And like, Oh, I guess I'll just see if I die.

So what pushed me over the edge? I want to be clear about this, because I'm an idiot, but I'm not a complete idiot. I wasn't feeding the squirrel, and that's what I think pushed any doctor to tell me to go and get a rabies shot. Because it came to me and then I put my hand out and then it just bit me really hard. I wasn't feeding it nuts or a little chocolate bar, it came to me, I reached my hand out, which is stupid, and then it bit me.

And you think that's less stupid than feeding it.

Okay, I'm going to stop talking because you're completely right.

Wait, but you wanted to take a picture?

That was embarrassing. I had my phone in one hand. Because it was going to be a beautiful moment, you know, it was going to be one of those Nat Geo shots or something.

So is there a picture of you getting bit by a squirrel? That's what I want to know.

Yeah, there is actually.

It is a beautiful moment, really.

Yeah, here it is. I've got a lot of photos of squirrels on my phone. Oh my god, yeah, look at all these squirrels. Okay? So this is the moment it bit me.

It's literally biting your finger. Ew, ew.

And I want to be clear as well. I said in that text to you, it was a scratch because I didn't want to freak you out. I know, but it really was a good bite.

Holy shit, David, that squirrel looks angry, too.

Okay, well, that's the thing again, and that's why it sort of pushed me over. I did have a real worry because it had bitten me and I wasn't feeding it and it looked a bit mad.

Listen, so can we circle back that I'm right, that my armchair expert theory was correct when I said, Hey, that seems like.-.

How would have you felt, Rob, if in a year's time, I'd been in here recording and I started sort of twitching?

You didn't have to present the facts, then you lied about it because you said it was a scratch.

I watered it down, I did.

No, but I was basing mine based on it, just being a scratch.

But I'm saying my theory that it acted erratic, because I don't think squirrels just do that.

The fact that it bit you in the first place, yeah.

I thought your finger was food. I mean, we have squirrels in our backyard that come up to our sliding door and they like the kids, they-.

What I'm gonna take from this is that Rob wants me to die.

I think that's a good takeaway.

Stay tuned for more Flightless bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

It really can. I went to therapy on Wednesday and I felt so good after I talked through something that was happening and she really made me feel at peace.

My therapist in New Zealand until I fired her was really great. The great thing with BetterHelp is that if you don't know, seriously, if you don't like your therapist on BetterHelp, you can easily change to another one. And that's something that I always struggled with because it's such a big commitment. And the idea of locking in with someone I find really off-putting, and with BetterHelp being able to swap when you want to, I find really rewarding.

It does require a safety and a vulnerability, and you don't have that with every single person. So to be able to switch-.

You need to find the one for you and then lock it in. If you're thinking of starting therapy, you can give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a therapist.

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Oh, and you love it?

I do really like it. I am tall and lanky and have a bad back. So mattresses for me are pretty much everything. Because if I'm on a bad mattress, I wake up and I feel like, shit, I can't stand up properly.

Yeah, that's a fun magic trick.

And there it is.

Now do you sleep on your back side, stomach, one leg up?

I nap on my stomach. okay, I only sleep on my back and my side.

Wow.

Yeah, always.

And when you're on your back, do you cross your arms like a vampire?

Oh, yeah, I've been told it's terrifying, yeah, and sometimes I sleep with my eyes open.

So yeah, oh what?

Sometime when I was shooting Dark Tourist, I would always share a room with my DP Dom and he took photos of me. I'll show you sometime I look terrifying. Oh, to put your mind at ease, they offer a 100-night trial and a 10 to 15-year warranty to try out your new Helix mattress.

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I decided to do something in this documentary. I'm not sure if it's worked or not, where I sort of cut up my story with other people's stories. Yeah, no, it's great suspense, you know, do I die at the end?

Yeah, we hired an AI robot to play David for this.

Let me be very clear, I was still debating if I should get the rabies vaccine and the immune globulin it's paired with. On the one hand, rabies was a horrible death, and I had been bitten by a wild American creature, on the other hand. All the literature I was reading said that squirrels hardly ever carry rabies. in America. Apparently, no squirrel has ever given anyone rabies ever.

I think what stands out to me is that it is something that has to be done. You don't want to have rabies and rabies, from what I read, sounds terrible and it's something that the health department recommended to me and really pushed me to do. But then there's this huge cost to it, which is wild. Because even my friend, her husband, said to her, I get that Courtney doesn't want rabies, but isn't it just a virus?

At about this moment, I got a message from my friend Josh. He was the one who tipped me over the edge. This is what he emailed me. I can't get over this. The survival rate for rabies is basically 0%.

If you have any medical information questions, please press one.

But like most American companies, it led to automated hell and a closed office.

Our offices are currently closed.

And so a day after I'd been bitten, I reluctantly wandered into the ED and signed myself in. I sat amongst a lot of groaning and some vomiting, and I waited. And as I waited, I thought about all the other Americans who've been in my position. 60,000 a year.

So my name's Paul, I grew up in Dunedin, actually.

This is Paul, and as you can tell from the accent, he's also a New Zealander. I didn't know him before this phone call. By the way, he met his American partner in New Zealand. They got married, had two kids.

So one of the kids came and got me and said, Dad, there's a bat in the bonus room, and there it is sleeping, hanging upside down from the Venetian blind. So we picked it up and we took it outside. It was still daylight. So we left it under this little cage and we used a fishing net to get it out to the bonus room. Put it on the deck under a little cage, waited till it got dark, lifted up the cage.

He says that because ideally, you catch the animal that bit you so it can be tested for rabies to see if it's actually rabbit. And if you need the vaccine.

And then my wife had actually been bitten by a cat that we were fostering, and she was doing some research and realized that. Actually, you know, even if you have not been bitten, there is a high risk that a little bat could be flying around the house, biting at will while you're asleep.

Oh right, so you're not going to feel it if it bites you, necessarily.

Exactly, apparently their teeth are very, very small. It wouldn't wake you up, and you may not realize that you've been bitten at all.

This was all sounding very familiar.

We knew two things we probably needed some treatments and that it was going to be expensive. Those are sort of the two things that we knew. For sure. Shots don't scare us, but we really want to make the cost as low as possible.

He called the Public Health Department and found out that, in theory, any medical practitioner can order rabies immune gobulin and administer it, but in practice, only an ED will administer it.

So after trying to negotiate with lots of different places, we ended up just going to the ER. There's an ER just down the road, about two miles away. It was a reasonably busy evening, but they managed to fit us in pretty quickly. My daughter and I sort of went ahead, and then when they said, Yes, we can get you all in, my wife and son came as well.

Like me, he felt sort of like a phony waiting in an emergency room, surrounded by people with very, very full on problems.

It was put so succinctly by the physician there, he said. It's 100 preventable and it's 100 fatal. Obviously, rabies is a horrific death. I think you've got spasms and, yeah, awful, awful death.

For Paul, it wasn't just his potential death he was thinking about, it was his wife and his two kids.

So yeah, we tried to get a cost before we went in, just because we knew it was going to be expensive. And of course, there's four of us. So one health system, who shall remain nameless, would not give us a price at all. And I thought that was illegal, I thought they had to be able to give you a price upfront.

Pretty quickly, Paul realized they'd hit their $10,500 out-of-pocket maximum. There was the multiple ER visits, the multiple family members, the multiple vaccines over multiple days, and the very expensive hit of immune globulin. That serum to kickstart your immune response, which can be billed at around $10,000 just for that. Here's Paul with a crash course in American health insurance.

In our case, we pay the first $1,000, which is the deductible, so that would be four people times $1,000. So that's a minimum of $4,000 for the year. However, because it was a family, we actually have a total for the family of $3,000, so that's great.

And did you get up to that $10,500?

Yes, we did.

I'm pretty confident it would have been cheaper for me to fly back to New Zealand and get it done there and have a holiday and then fly back again.

I briefly flirted with the idea of going to Mexico.

Paul works as a family nurse practitioner, so he found the whole injection process quite fascinating.

So my weight was just a few pounds, and it's kilos for the New Zealanders, a few pounds over. And so they had to use a second vial, so the vials were, I think, $7,000 each. So I weigh 178 pounds. If I had weighed 170, then it would have been one vial.

And just a casual extra $7,000 on your bill.

Exactly, and so the real cost to me was an extra $1,000, so everybody else paid $1,800 for that first visit, and then mine was $2,800. However, in the same room at the same time, my daughter is only using a small part of one vial. And we did jokingly say, Hey, can you make sure you combine it?

Paul's glad he and his family got the shots. It did set him back over $10,000. As I waited in the emergency department, I wondered what my bill would be to make myself feel better. I got out my phone, went to YouTube and pulled up the rabies scene from Old Yeller.

No, mama, there's no hope for him now, Travis.

He's suffering.

That's Travis's mom talking, offering this tiny kid her massive rifle. Old Yeller is such a sad movie. It was made in 1957 and produced by Walt Disney, the man responsible for making me think squirrels were harmless and would never bite me. In the movie, Travis adopts a dog, Old Yeller, who becomes his best friend, even saving him from a bear. But a rabid wolf bites old Yeller, and Old Yeller gets rabies.

You know, we've got to do it.

I know mama.

Grabs his mother's massive gun and points it at his favorite dog, Old Yeller, now fizzing at the mouth with rabies. In my opinion, Old Yeller is way sadder than Bambi. It was so loved. It spawned a sequel, Savage Sam, but I'll never watch Savage Sam because I just don't know how you top rabid old Yeller.

Totally. The numbers, they appear, made up the total cost to our family for four E.R. visits. And then another three sets of shots each was, I think, $75,000 or $95,000. The insurance company then negotiates with the hospital system, and they negotiate that down to $25,000..

I find American healthcare really puzzling. The quality of care is some of the best in the world once you get it, but getting it seems hard and it seems really expensive.

The idea of American exceptionalism. And America does have great healthcare. If you can afford it, you are likely to get amazing healthcare. For cancer. You are probably going to get your hip replacement done really quickly, et cetera, et cetera. There is some very, very good healthcare, but you're paying almost five times much as anybody else for that privilege.

GP stands for general practitioner, I think you say PCP instead of GP in America.

Because it means that you use the system, I think, more sensibly, whereas here you're sort of umming and ahhing. Do I really want to call the ambulance because I know that's going to be 1500 bucks, or do I really want to go to the ER? I'm sure there are people who delay treatment all the time because they cannot afford it.

I went back to the ED a few more times to complete my shots. I felt embarrassed showing my butt to the nurse. I don't like my butt. I can't even remember being jabbed in the butt ever before now.

We have made sure that bats cannot get into our houses anymore. We found where it got in. And we don't talk to dogs, and we make sure the cats don't have rabies, yeah.

As for Courtney, well, she's still continuing to sleep with the lights off, although there is a memory which is bugging her. About the pest control people who got rid of her unwanted roommates in the walls.

It did concern me when the bat people did not go inside and I said, It's great that you have found ways that they could possibly get in and taking care of that. But what about the one that was inside?

But what about the one that was inside? I feel a shiver go down my spine. I hope it's not rabies.

That was incredible.

So I'm still waiting for my bills to come in, which is scary. It hasn't happened yet. So I went to the emergency room four times. So with my insurance, because I've got, like a cheap insurance policy, because I'm cheap. It's $400 a time. And then you pay for the vaccines, on top of that for lots of the vaccines.

Yeah, so then you've already wasted money and you might die.

The one thing I was really excited about was that I figured, once I have it, I have like a lifetime of being able to play with squirrels and raccoons. Because I'm invincible from rabies. But it doesn't last forever, it gives you, I think, like three or four months, and then you're back to being potentially killed by rabies again. It sucked so hard.

That's your butt, so we can weigh in on what it looks like.

No, the thing is she had never done this before, so she's on Google reading. Like, how to give the shots and what to do and how to divvy it up. That was terrifying. I went to the CDC's website afterwards and they said, and this makes me very suspicious. Very clearly. Don't give those shots in the butt. the butt's not where you give them because it doesn't get distributed through your body correctly.

David.

So I'm going, Did it even do its job? Fuck me, maybe I do have rabies, maybe it didn't do its job.

Well, you do seem angry right now.

Your mouth is foaming a little bit.

I get angry thinking about what the bill's gonna be when it comes in.

What is your deductible, do you know?

I think my maximum out of pocket is $10,000. Maybe so it'll stop there, which is good now, it's not great.

It's not great, I think you're probably gonna have to pay, pay that.

It's so annoying.

Also, Well, maybe not, it should be just one person.

Yeah, but it's four admissions, all the shots. The other thing that was crazy to me is that everyone I called didn't really know. So my PCP essentially told me, No. You can go and get that at any pharmacy and just get it and bring it in and I'll give it to you. None of the pharmacies had it, CVS didn't have it.

They just laughed, you were shamed.

I was shamed, I was shamed. The nurse laughed at me the first time I came in and I said, I need a rabies shot, and she just openly laughed at me. It's life or death, I wanted to say.

Yeah.

This could be it for me.

It could be it. Listen, now I kind of understand this black market. $11 rabies shot.

When I talked to that person, this was post all of this, and I was like, Oh my god, imagine if that was a real thing. And they were like, $15 shots, holy shit. Also, it sounds like some huge scam that was going on.

It's definitely like fentanyl they're injecting.

Yeah, it sounds like there was something horrific that I probably missed. Wow. The other thing, if you do get bitten by something, do try and keep it. It's often after something's bitten you, it's not your priority to try and catch it. Like, I didn't try and catch that squirrel, I just let it run away.

If you tried to catch it, you'd get so many bites, you would be covered in blood from that squirrel.

It's true, it's true.

How did you even catch anything that bites you?

I might order a big net actually off Amazon and just have it with me.

The bat thing is really makes me feel really freaked out.

It's unnerving, yeah, the fact it can bite you and you won't feel it. it is awful. It's a horrific concept.

If they're in the walls and stuff, I mean, now I'm anxious because at my parents house, there was a squirrel living in the walls.

There was a squirrel in there.

For a bit, yeah, and it would make noises and you could hear it scurrying around, and it was so annoying.

How long was it in there for?

A while and then someone came and got it out, but what if it came out in? No? I guess my parents wouldn't know if they got bit by a squirrel, okay?

A squirrel, you'd probably feel it.

I don't think squirrels are normally trying to bite people unless you're sticking your fingers in their mouth.

Again, that's the other frustrating thing. I did my own googling. And no one in America has ever gotten rabies from a squirrel. And yet every medical professional I talked to said, really clearly, definitely get the rabies vaccine. But maybe they're just covering their own ass, right? Of course they are, I don't think like that.

But you have to think like that because the reason they have to cover their ass is because it's deadly. It's not, and you might just get really sick. No, no, you'll die.

Yeah.

So yes, you absolutely have to.

And they're probably scared that I'll sue them if I do get rabies, right?

And die.

Well, you'll be dead, you'll be dead. I don't know what you'll do with the money. I never got two weeks of frothing.

Where I could maybe start a lawsuit as well.

I mean, that sounds like the worst way to go.

What I'm excited about now? If I reach my maximum out of pocket, I can just go crazy and just get a whole lot of procedures for free. Right? Because I'm not gonna, it's not gonna cost me anything else.

Yeah, you should go like.

Botox.

Okay.

I don't think that's covered.

Insurance doesn't cover that, but you could get like a heart scan and like an EKG.

Yeah, there's a few other lumps that have appeared.

Where?

I've got a little lump in my neck.

Really.

Yeah, so I might go and get that checked out.

Wait, do you have one on the other side, though?

Is it a lymph node?

I think it's a lymph, but it feels sore when I push it.

Maybe you're getting a little sick.

I might go and check that.

Do you know that you shouldn't play with snakes if you see them while you're hiking?

I know that, okay.

They're also poisonous.

Do you know what to do if I'm there and there's a snake? Do you remember what to do?

We carefully walk past, carefully you kill it, carefully chop its head off.

And I will correct you, rabies is a thing globally, as we have learned, it's not just in America.

Yeah, you're right, it is everywhere. There's a bit more of it here because of all the bats, I think.

Right? But in New Zealand, if you go on a vacation and you get bit by something there, you still have to get a rabies shot.

Well, I don't think that's the official advice, what I don't think you do, it's official. I think there must have.. ..

And you never had to get one.

No one's ever told me to, but it is possible it does exist there, so I'll have to look into that a bit more.

I mean, if it's a domesticated animal, No.

Let me just google rabies in New Zealand.

Yeah.

Well, if it's domesticated, you have the animal and you can test it.

But they normally don't like my friend who just got bit, and I got bit once by a dog. You just had to clean the wound.

They assume that a dog you can tell if it's rabid or not.

Oh yeah, so mpi..govt...nz, which is our sort of official agency. New Zealand has never had a case of rabies.

Oh, ever.

So yeah, I think we are.

Okay.

Did you get bit before or after you went back?

I got bit, Oh, maybe I took it back with me.

Yeah, I'd say, maybe I'm not sure you're spreading it.

No, it was after, because, remember, he was pathetic, he went home and he got pathetic, and then he came here and got bit by a squirrel and got Covid.

It was horrible, I had a really bad run.

You did, but you're back.

I'm fighting fit.

What's that mean?

I'm fighting fit, it means I'm top of the world.

Okay, you're back at it.

Yeah, I'm back at it, I'm okay.

You're up and running.

Lumping your neck?

No, I'm excited for you to get to try out all the procedures.

I'm gonna maybe that could be an episode. This is a glass half full, me just getting all the medical. You're right, you've got to look at it that way.

Big time, what a ride. That was a really interesting episode, I didn't know.

It was a really stressful few days.

I'm sure you don't share enough, I was gonna say with us, but Rob is a Rascal, so I get it, but you don't share that.

Maybe I do, I do sometimes, I don't want to worry other people too much. I shut down, I shut people out.

You can't do that when I got cut by that knife, when I cut myself.

I called when the knife jumped out at you because you were trying to pet it.

High five it.

Exactly, I called everyone, I called everyone in my phone book. almost. I didn't call Rob because I knew he had kids and I was worried.

Yeah, would have ordered the Uber.

Anyway, all to say.

I'm really glad be more open.

Yes, emotionally, be more open to the rest of the world. Don't pet random animals and don't try to take selfies with them. This is so ironic and classic that you're trying to take a picture for Instagram and you get bit by a squirrel. That's very American.

Yeah, you're right, you're actually right. It's probably the most American thing I've done, 40 more American, thank you.

Bye.