Ready for 25 shots in the belly with a long needle, I braced for the jab. Thanks to modern science, though, I only required one shot in each arm and one in each leg. Three more next week will do the trick.

No rabies.

Bring on the vampires.

I was going to tell the nurses I fought a tiger but thought better of it when I saw an emergency room doctor looking at me and thought he might be a psychiatrist. Involuntary commitment is not my idea of a wild weekend.

Stephanie woke me a few nights earlier with the bat signal.

“Bat in the bedroom!” she said at 2 a.m.

After bailing out of bed we peeked through the crack in the closed door and watched as the little critter circled the rotating ceiling fan. Around and around he went with no means of escape. Entering the room like a commando I opened a window. We turned off the fan and the light. Again I went behind enemy lines and opened another window.

No luck.

Exhausted, the poor little fellow clung to the wall. I tried to trap him in a cardboard box, but he slid away and crawled under the bed. So we waited. Patience is a virtue. Eventually he fled.

Steve from Pennsylvania Critter Control in Scranton checked out the house and determined no bats lived there and hadn’t left attic droppings. But he advised us to contact our doctor just in case the bat scratched or bit. You sometimes don’t even feel the claws or teeth when you’re asleep, he said, adding that doctors almost always advised rabies shots after exposure. We contacted our physician, Dr. Brenda Goodrich at Geisinger 65 Forward, who suggested “post exposure vaccination is the safest route.”

Rabies is almost always fatal, according to experts, and might lay dormant for months or even years before seizures, hallucinations, inflammation of the brain and death. By the time severe symptoms attack you’re a goner.

On a busy Thursday afternoon loaded with very sick patients ranging from sparkling newborns to terribly sad senior citizens, the Geisinger CMC emergency room nurses, the physician’s assistant and resident staff could not have been nicer. Smart and efficient, they treated Stephanie and me with the utmost care.

The only regret I have is I wasn’t able to sink my fangs into a few people’s throats (you know who you are) before I got vaccinated. I’m particularly thankful I didn’t have to take even one shot in the belly. Somebody did, though.

The dark Buddha tattoo on my upper left arm took a direct hit. Stoic and still, he sat Zazen in a calm meditative mood. Peace of mind is always worth the effort, especially when it comes to famine, pestilence, destruction and death.

I’m pretty sure we’re OK.

But I still want to bite somebody.