A woman has revealed how an evening jog left her in the emergency room followed by weeks of medical treatment. Sophia Coe, 25, made the decision to go out for a jog around Edwin Warner Park in Nashville, Tennessee in early August. It was around 7:30 p.m. at the time and the sun was setting, so Coe wanted to finish her run before it got too dark.
As she was running, Coe, a teacher and a musician, told Newsweek that she felt "a little prick" on the back of her leg. She initially believed it was a tick bite, which was a scary enough prospect to her. However, when she looked at her calf, she realized the problem was much worse.
"I looked down and saw the wings, so I thought it was a moth," Coe said. "What I did not know then was that moths don't have teeth, so they can't bite people. It was on me for a while, long enough for me to feel the bite.
I kept hitting it and then it finally released and went for my other calf through my leggings," she continued. Coe continued to hit the creature to scare it off and eventually had to hit it with her phone until it flew away. She said the incident was "really scary," and it left her "yelping and whimpering." Once the chaos concluded, it became clear that this was no moth or insect.
Coe returned home swiftly and washed the bites on her legs with antibacterial soap. Once the wounds were clean, she swiftly looked up the nearest emergency room and headed straight there. "I knew right away that it was a bat because I looked up bat bites and they looked exactly like mine.
I respect bats, they're great for the ecosystem and we need them, but I am definitely scared of them now," Coe said. Having only moved to Nashville recently to pursue her career in music, this was an incredibly scary experience to go through alone. Doctors cleaned her wounds multiple times and began the precautionary rabies treatment.
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