A 6-year-old girl is recovering after being bitten by a rabid bat outside her Wisconsin home — before her brother killed the animal with a homemade “Braveheart”-inspired sword, her family and health officials said Tuesday.
Cecilia “Cece” Kale was playing on a tree in front of the family’s home in Tigerton, about 60 miles west of Green Bay, last week when the winged mammal attacked her left thigh.
The girl’s brothers — Nicklas, 11, and Camden, 16 — then jumped into action to get the bat off their sister before killing it with a homemade blade, their mother, Elizabeth Kale, told NBC News.
“And here comes Camden and he’s like, ‘No!’ and he’s got the pole and he just knocks [the bat] off [Cece] and then Nicklas grabs it, and he just starts killing the thing,” she said. “Nick made the homemade sword. We love ‘Braveheart.’”
She added that her son made the sword the day of the attack. In the days since, she said Nicklas has been regularly quoting lines from the 1995 Mel Gibson movie.
The bat tested positive for rabies, and the family consented to Cece receiving the lifesaving shots less than 48 hours after the attack, Kale said, even though they oppose mandated immunizations.
While Kale said the family would’ve opted for treatment had the bat not been captured and tested, she was grateful for the doctors and county health officials, who patiently explained the treatment plan.
Rabies is nearly 100% fatal if left untreated but is almost certainly nonfatal with a series of five shots.
Nick Mau, health officer with the Shawano-Menominee County Health Department, confirmed the attack and estimated that his office deals with about one rabid bat attack on a human each year.
“This one’s getting all the [attention] because a young individual was exposed to a bat that did indeed test positive, so it’s not uncommon,” Mau said.
Mau said his office regularly interacts with patients who may be hesitant to receive vaccines and other widely accepted medical treatments.
“We understand that there’s lots of different viewpoints on different treatments, different immunizations, childhood vaccines or, in this case, rabies prophylaxis,” he said. “What our job is to do is to communicate risk, what’s recommended by the medical community, what’s recommended by the state health department and the CDC.”
Despite the painful shot, Kale said, her daughter still loves playing outside and doesn’t seem to be fazed by the attack.
“She’s just so brave and has a stronger constitution than the rest of us,” she said.
Kale added that she won’t stop her eight children from enjoying the outdoors despite the local bat population.
“We want to live out here to give our kids land and homeschool and to raise them as we would have in 1850 and to give them that type of lifestyle,” she added. “And they’re thriving.”
