It was the last week of summer. Spymom believes all boys require copious outside time. Whining, Spy and Q were dragged into the yard. “Play,” I commanded. More whining ensued.

At last, I managed to get Q to play a game of catch with me. Spy, meanwhile, was poking around the yard.

Spy catches things. Bugs mostly. Toads and frogs sometimes. Once he spent a half hour chatting to a worm as the two of them played with the hose. This day, he caught something a little more… exciting.

The scene:

“I’ve caught something! Come see,” Spy yelled.

“Be nice,” I yelled back and tossed the ball to Q. Q rolled his eyes.

“OOW! It bit me!”

Okay? Now Spy had my attention. There was nothing in that front yard that he’s caught before that has teeth.

The victim:

Spy had snagged a vole. Which was now running quickly for cover. A key question ran through my mind: Are voles nocturnal?

Once upon a time, Spy’s aunt – age 8 – was bitten by a bat in broad daylight. It flew away. And she suffered through a series of very painful rabies shots because the animal could not be analyzed.

With this in mind, I grabbed the watering can and started smacking at the vole, shoving it back toward the driveway, preventing its escape. “Go grab some Tupperware. We need to trap the vole.” I yelled at Q. “What’s Tupperware?” he yelled back, running nonetheless for the kitchen. He knew what I wanted, however, and returned with a drinking glass.

While Q crouched, holding the poor rodent captive, I dragged a shell-shocked Spy to the kitchen sink.

Yes indeed, the vole’s teeth had broken skin.

Alcohol.

Neosporin.

Too many band-aids.

I called Spydad. How convenient to have a pathologist in the family just now.

I explained the situation. “The internet is still out, thank you Tropical Storm Irene. Can you check and see if voles carry rabies?”

The answer? “Theoretically. But probably not.”

Of course, probably is not a good enough answer for a mom.

“Let your ER know, we’re coming in. And we’re bringing the vole.”

I grabbed the recently abandoned hamster Habitrail from the dining room floor (more on that later) and went back outside to wide-eyed Q. Together, we stuffed the vole into the cage and slammed the lid. Into the trunk went the cage. Within minutes, Spy and Q were buckled up.

“Am I going to have to get shots?” Spy worried from the back seat.

“Maybe,” I replied, unwilling to spare his feelings. Sometimes a little deep emotion can help impress upon a kid the severity of the situation. Thus followed a lecture about touching wild animals (specifically mammals) and the rabies virus.

We arrived in the pathology department with this in tow:

Expectant and amused faces met us at every turn. Co-workers couldn’t help but burst into laughter to see their boss carrying the multi-colored cage followed by a parade of wide-eyed boys. Spy’s adventure was today’s excitement.

Turned out we didn’t need to go to the ER. The infectious disease doctor stopped in Spydad’s office to hand over a prescription for Augmentin. He was amused. And impressed that Spy had managed to snag a wild rodent. The concern for rabies was almost zero.

That’s one thing about scientist types. You’ll never get us to commit to anything 100%.

The lab techs found this both interesting and amusing. “Let’s send it in. We never get to do this.”

Out came the forms. “Uh Oh. It says we have to send the specimen in dead. And on ice.”

“Oh,” I replied, dragging a cold pack from the snack bag I’d hastily thrown together. “Here. Use this.” ER waits can be long.

“We have to kill it,” she repeated, not looking pleased with the idea.

“Not a problem,” I replied. “Six years of mouse research has me thoroughly qualified to do the job.” I was led to a hood where I gloved up and pulled the vole from the cage. The poor thing was nearly dead of fright already. This is one of the (many) reasons wild rodents cannot be made into pets. They will die of fright. Literally.

Moments later, the vole was packaged on ice and I was being given directions to the Department of Health. We didn’t warrant a courier.

I left Spy and Q playing video games under their dad’s desk and departed. Nobody even blinked at the Dept. of Health.

Over the next 24 hours, Spy worriedly inquired about the test results. He worried so much that we covered the basics of viral and bacterial disease and what was being done to keep him safe and healthy. As such, the nasty liquid antibiotic was consumed readily, treated by Spy like a magic elixir.

A day later, the results were in: the vole was rabies free. Spy jumped up with a cheer and did a happy dance.

Spymom has since noted the family hamster has been treated with more respect.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2011 at 9:53 am and is filed under Missions, Scary, Spiders, Bugs and Creepy Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.