# Man Gets Rabies From Bat, Blames Batman for "False Advertising" About Bats
Look, I’m not saying the Dark Knight is directly responsible for this guy’s impending zombie-adjacent death, but I’m also not *not* saying that. In what might be the most on-brand American tragedy of 2024, a dude from suburban Ohio is currently fighting for his life after contracting rabies from a bat he claims he “should have trusted” because of how cool Batman made flying rats look in the movies.
Let me set the scene: 37-year-old Kyle “Batsy” Henderson (yes, his actual nickname) was enjoying a quiet evening on his back porch in Dayton, nursing a Natty Light and questioning his life choices, when a bat swooped down and sank its teeth into his neck like a tiny, rabies-filled vampire. According to police reports, Henderson’s first reaction wasn’t “oh crap, I need a doctor,” but rather, “holy crap, I’m basically Batman now.”
Spoiler alert: He’s not Batman. He’s just a guy with a swollen brain and a lot of regrets.
Here’s where it gets *chef’s kiss* stupid. When paramedics arrived, Henderson allegedly refused treatment for a full ten minutes because he was “waiting for his butler Alfred to show up.” When informed he didn’t have a butler, he reportedly asked if they could at least call him “Bruce.” They did not. They called him an Uber to the ER instead, because America’s healthcare system is as joke as this guy’s survival instincts.
Now, Henderson is in the ICU, and the hospital bill is probably going to be higher than the GDP of a small country. But instead of blaming his own questionable decision-making—like, I don’t know, not getting the post-exposure rabies vaccine immediately—he’s doing what any red-blooded American would do in 2024: he’s looking for someone to sue.
And who’s the lucky defendant? You guessed it: Warner Bros., DC Comics, and the entire Batman franchise.
According to the lawsuit Henderson filed from his hospital bed (yes, he filed it from the hospital bed, because America), he claims that decades of Batman media “grossly misrepresented the nature of bats,” leading him to believe they were “noble, crime-fighting allies” rather than “rabies-delivery systems with wings.” He’s seeking $10 million in damages for “emotional distress, medical expenses, and the crushing disappointment of not developing any superpowers.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure “a movie lied to me” isn’t a valid legal defense against a preventable zoonotic disease. But hey, this is America, where you can sue McDonald’s for burning yourself with hot coffee and win, so maybe Kyle has a shot. At the very least, he’ll get a settlement that covers his funeral costs.
Let’s talk about the rabies, shall we? Because this is where the dark humor kicks in. Rabies is basically nature’s final boss. Once symptoms show up, you’re dead. Like, 99.9% fatality rate. It turns your brain into a smoothie. It makes you afraid of water. It’s the most terrifying way to go out since the Black Plague, and yet, people still treat it like it’s no big deal.
“Oh, it’s just a bat bite,” Kyle probably thought. “I’ll just watch *The Dark Knight* again and it’ll heal.”
No, Kyle. You will foam at the mouth and hallucinate. You will die surrounded by nurses in full hazmat gear. Your last thought will be, “I should have just stayed inside and played Fortnite.”
And honestly? The comments on the local news Facebook post are a goldmine of peak internet energy:
“He deserved it. Bats are literally flying garbage.”
“This is why I set all bats on fire.”
“Batman would never. This guy is a poser.”
“Praying for a full recovery… of the bat.”
The AITA energy is off the charts. Everyone is saying NTA to the bat. The bat was just being a bat. It didn’t promise anyone a crime-fighting career. It didn’t have a cool car or a gravelly voice. It just wanted to eat some mosquitoes and maybe give you a fatal neurological disease. That’s its entire deal. That’s like blaming a shark for being a shark because you watched *Jaws* and thought it would be a good idea to give it a high-five.
But here’s the real kicker: Henderson’s GoFundMe has already raised $47,000. Because of course it has. Americans will donate to anything. “Help Kyle Fight Rabies (And Warner Bros.)” has 1,200 donors and counting. One guy even donated $500 with the note: “For the cowl.”
I can’t. I literally cannot.
The CDC is now using this as a PSA: “Bats are not your friends. They are not cute. They are not superheroes. They are disease vectors with wings. Please stop trying to be Batman.”
But you know it won’t work. There’s already a Reddit thread in r/conspiracy claiming that the rabies vaccine is a ploy by Big Pharma to stop people from being bitten by bats and developing bat-powers. Someone commented, “What if Batman’s origin story was just a cover-up for a government experiment?” and it has 2,000 upvotes.
We deserve the extinction event that’s coming.
Meanwhile, Henderson’s condition is “stable but critical,” which is doctor-speak for “we’re not sure if he’ll wake up or start speaking in echolocation.” His family is asking for privacy, which is rich considering they’re the ones who started the GoFundMe and posted a TikTok of Kyle in the hospital bed making a “I’m Batman” joke before he got intubated.
The only silver lining here is that this story is going to be a textbook example of natural selection for the next 50 years.
Final Thoughts
After decades on the crime beat of public health, I’ve learned that nature’s most chilling threats are often the quietest—and the rabies bat is a master of that grim silence. This article underscores a sobering truth: we’ve become desensitized to the mundane vectors of deadly disease, forgetting that a single, undetected scratch from a nocturnal creature can rewrite a life’s ending. The real story here isn’t just the virus, but our collective, dangerous complacency in the face of a predator that flies under the radar of our fear.