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SOUTH HAMPTON, N.H. — A New Hampshire man got a big surprise last week when he was bitten by a bat inside his home.

The little creature seemed to have found a hiding spot inside the man’s iPad case.

Last Thursday night, 86-year-old Roy Syvertson sat down in his living room to look at his iPad.

“I always do the same thing,” Syvertson said. “I just open it up like that and flip it around and then I usually put it in between my legs like that.”

And an hour later, as he was closing his iPad, he felt something on his finger.

“I felt something,” Syvertson said. “It felt like a little bee sting. And I looked and the bat was coming out of here between the cover and the back of the pad.”

Reacting, Syvertson pressed down on the cover to keep the bat from flying away.

“Then I got up and, still squeezing it which I’m sure he wasn’t happy about, and I took him outside,” he said. “When I got up in the morning he was still there. And I thought he was all right.”

But later that night he found the bat had died.

“Then I knew I might have a problem,” Syvertson said.

Fearing the bat had rabies, he called Fish and Game.

“He said I would like you to go to the hospital right away — waste no time,” Syvertson said.

He did and immediately started rabies treatments. Later, he learned from Fish and Game that the bat did have rabies.

“It was good thing I didn’t decide to cuddle him a little bit,” the man said.

Syvertson says he feels fine but he hopes this will help educate others about rabies.

As for how the bat got into his house.

“It will remain a mystery,” he said. “And my joke of ‘He probably knew my password’ is not going to last forever. That won’t be funny for a long time.”

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