I did get asked to make it slightly less pretty, actually! 😄

Originally I would plate it nicely as I would for a human, but some patients are a bit pickier of eaters, but we need to make sure they eat everything they need, not just the things they want, so plating too pretty can let them dig out just the bits they want.

But I adapted and started to do things like crush up the eggshells into the egg itself and basically make them a calcium omolette, put the dried insects into the meat patte so they rehydrate a bit and don’t get knocked off the plate, and other things like that to experiment with flavor and texture combos.

The process of coordinating and paying for the shot has been much worse than the actual shots! 😅

Insurance typically doesn’t cover them, and many places don’t give them, even if they advertise they do. Since getting preemptive rabies shots isn’t the most common thing, places don’t stock the vaccine. They end up throwing out more than they use.

A rehab across the state takes advantage of this and has 1 or 2 shot clinics a year where they get the vaccine, and since they have all of us rehabbers coming at once, they can use all the vaccine instead of throwing it away. One vial can do 8-10 people if it gets used all at once like that, so it really lowers the cost for us.

We get 3 shots, I think it was on week 1, week 2, and week 4. It costs us $100 per shot this way instead of anywhere from around $400-800 per shot in a regular vaccine place. The trade off is driving. Where I got my shots is 3 hours away, so it becomes a full day activity x4 so far. I’m usually a lazy bum on the weekends, so I made adventures out of the trips, stopping at waterfalls, animal sanctuaries, and great restaurants along the way.

The pre exposure shots are just under the skin, with a super tiny needle, not deep in the muscle like a post bite vaccine is. I didn’t feel sick after any of them, but the injection site was really swollen and a bit itchy like a bad mosquito bite, and it stayed that way for a few weeks. Sometimes I’d forget about it and itch it and it hurt so much then, but otherwise it was not a big deal.

You have to wait a month or so after the final shot to get tested for efficacy, which is why I keep forgetting to schedule my retest, and many people don’t know how to schedule the test when I call because it’s an odd request. We also need to get a titer check every 2 years to ensure our antibody count stays at a safe level. We do still need post-bite shots if we do get bit. I heard you do still get really sick if you get bit by a rabid animal, but at least you know you shouldn’t die. It’s the actual rehabbers mainly that have to worry about that, since they do the initial exams on all the animals, so I don’t want to make it sound like it’s scary for the majority of us!