If you need reading material to avoid returns.
Dear Prudence,
I am a college student just wrapping up my junior year. This school year has been incredibly stressful for me. I had to undergo a series of rabies shots after being bitten by a bat, my mother’s house was burglarized, and two close friends have been imprisoned. The house I live in attracts numerous unwanted critters and is far enough away from campus that I have lost touch with most of my classmates. Because of these factors, I have been experiencing severe bouts of depression and emotional instability, and I recently succumbed to these feelings and sought out an escort online. However, she was an undercover police officer, and I was charged with solicitation. I sought out legal help on my own, and the charges will be dismissed in less than two months after I complete an educational program. I have also entered counseling through my university. I have not told anybody outside of my lawyer and therapist about the incident because there is a definite social stigma regarding prostitution, and I am extremely embarrassed. My parents have been very understanding and supportive of me this past year, but I do not think I can bring myself to tell them about the incident. Given that the charge will be dismissed, do I need to tell my parents about it at all?
—From Bat to Worse
Re: If you need reading material to avoid returns.
Bit by a bat! JFC, how does that even happen! I guess it does, but I usually think of bats as being nocturnal, flying, and avoiding people. I've never even seen one "in the wild", but that might just be the places I've lived.
At any rate, no the LW doesn't need to tell their parents if they don't want to. It doesn't sound like any reason they would need to know.
I'm glad the LW started counseling at their school. Especially because they mentioned severe bouts of depression.
My H and I lived in an old house (circa 1850) that had coal fireplaces in two of the rooms. The chimneys were sealed at some point in time, but something was awry with one of the seals and we twice had a bird that flew into our house. It was freaky enough dealing with that! And very difficult to solve the problem. My H is terrified of birds, so it was up to me. One of them I was able to get to fly out of the house. But the other one came down the chimney at night, so there wasn't any sunlight to attract it to the outside. I had to kill that one. I thought I would never be able to catch that thing and if it hadn't been for it coming down to the floor periodically, I never would have. I probably would have had to wait for the next morning.
Last year, I spent about 3 weeks off and on at a PA health department looking through documents. Where I sat, the woman who called about dog and bat bites worked. She had 3 different calls about bats in houses! Only one house had to get the rabies series and that was because they couldn't prove the bat didn't bite them overnight since it was found in their bedroom in the morning.
There was a story about a woman who was attacked by a raccoon in her backyard. It was initially going after her small dog, but she picked it up in time. So then it started attacking her. And not a couple bites or anything minor like that. It ATTACKED her. Like there was a point during the attack where it had brought her down to the ground (she had her dog under her, still protecting it) and she wasn't sure if she was going to survive all the bites and the blood loss.
That series had a lot of the "usual" animals you'd think of that sometimes attack people, ie bears and sharks. But the "unexpected" animals, like a raccoon, were especially interesting. There was one about a giraffe. Another one about a seal.