I don’t know the person’s real name, but I’ve found the first good writer I’ve ever discovered on Tumblr. There were quite a few good writers on LiveJournal I used to read back in the day, but most writers on Tumblr seem semi-literate at best.

as they brought it in, i remember how eerily silent it was. normal raccoons chatter almost constantly. they fidget. they bump around. they purr and mumble and make little grabby-hands at everything. even when they’re in pain, and especially when they’re stressed. but this one wasn’t moving around inside the carrier, and it wasn’t making a sound.

Read it. It’s worth it.

Now, my experience with rabies. At a family reunion, my cousin and his friend found a bat. It was docile. Tame. They played with it. I didn’t; I didn’t because I read books, and what I read in those books is that an unafraid, tame wild animal is not a normal thing and it probably means rabies.

When people tell you that book smarts and street smarts are opposed, that’s not really true. You need both. Books saved my ass on at least two occasions. This was one of them. My cousin and his friend had to get rounds of rabies vaccination shots and were at real risk for rabies. I did not because I never went near the bat, never got within 10 feet of it. Because I’d read books that told me exactly what was up.

The bat was tested at the University of Florida, and it did indeed have rabies.