ID                              Bites
                                =====
þ Dog/Cat Bites
 - Keflex, Diclox, erythro all bad for Pasturella; use PCN + Anti-staph PCN or
   cephalosporin; or, Cefuroxime or Augmentin.
 - 3% of veterinary students have oropharyngeal Pasturella Multocida

The question of bats and rabies risk among cavers seems to come up again
and again, sometimes raised by people who ought to be familiar with the
earlier publications, here and elsewhere. In particular, cavers with access
to the "NSS News" should look up Danny Brass's very nice article in the
March 1995 issue. If you'd rather read three hundred pages on the subject
than four pages, get "Rabies in Bats" by the same author. This 1994 book
was published by a rather obscure publisher, but it is available from
cave-book dealers and could be ordered through any bookstore good enough to
be willing to order something not stocked by its distributor.
(Unfortunately, even some university bookstores are not good enough, these
days.) The ISBN is 0-9637045-1-6. I have not gotten around to reading my
copy yet, but it is getting closer to the top of the pile.

An original publication is "Rabies Transmission by Air in Bat Caves," by
Denny G. Constantine, United States Public Health Service Publication No.
1617, June 1967 (a National Communicable Disease Center Monograph). This
described the two fatal human cases of suspected air transmission and
subsequent experiments that verify that animals left in the caves, even in
cages screened against arthropods, are likely to get rabies. However, the
caves involved have maternity colonies of literally millions of freetail
bats (and smaller numbers of myotis) and are not the sort of place where
any sensible caver would go. Constantine's report contains a delightful
description of the environment in such caves when the bats are in
residence, which I am reproducing below. (This is work of the United States
Government, hence not subject to copyright.) If you are prone to hang out
in places like those described below, by all means get prophylactic rabies
shots.