Patricia Winters spends her days telling people that bats don't deserve the bad rap they get in vampire movies.

But she can't convince a San Joaquin County public health official that the bats she uses in her educational presentations aren't dangerous.

Winters, a Bay Area educator who shows the flying mammals at schools and festivals, last month was banned from taking her bats out of their plastic containers in San Joaquin County.

The reason: The county's director of disease control and prevention fears rabies.

"We're not against education," Dennis Ferrero said. "But we want it done in a way that individuals are protected."

There's no chance of contracting the deadly disease from her bats, said Winters, who holds the animals in her bare hands during presentations throughout Northern California, including Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties.

She stretches their wings. She feeds them bugs. She explains how they eat insects and protect farms from pests.

If she can't take her bats out of their containers, Winters said, she's not going to show them in San Joaquin County at all.

"What's the point?" she asked. "I would be teaching that bats are so dangerous that even I don't want to touch them."

Winters, who holds permits from the state Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, insists that her bats don't carry rabies. The disease usually is transmitted when a rabid bat, skunk or other animal bites a dog, a cat or a person.

The bats she uses were injured animals rescued from the wild. They can't fly, she said, so chances are slim they'll escape into the audience.

Winters said she tells audience members that bats can transmit rabies, and she doesn't let others touch them.

"And we tell people to be careful about handling wild animals," she said. "We don't gloss over that."

Still, Ferrero is concerned that Winters sets a poor example, especially for children in the audience. He points out that she handles bats while telling others not to.

"It's like me smoking in front of a child and saying it's a bad thing to do," he said.

Ferrero also pointed to studies suggesting that people can contract rabies without being bitten by infected animals.

He cited reports from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, detailing 17 cases of human rabies that researchers say came from bats. Not every person with rabies reported being bitten by a bat, according to the CDC reports, but many had been around bats before falling ill.

This led the agency to say that "limited contact" with rabid bats may expose a person to rabies.

There's a chance that some of the people in the CDC cases may have been bitten by bats and not known it, said Marta Guerra, an epidemiology intelligence officer with the CDC.

Bats have small sharp teeth. The bite of a bat feels something like a pin prick, Guerra said.

Ferrero also cited cases in which he says rabies was transmitted through the air.

One researcher died while working with a rabies strain in a lab, the CDC reported. Other experiments have been conducted with animals kept in caves with bats. The animals are said to have contracted rabies without being bitten.

Bat conservationists say the cave studies were done in contrived environments. In a recent publication, a group called Bat Conservation International pointed out that no similar rabies cases have occurred since the experiments, even though people continue to explore caves with bats in them.

Still, public health officials would rather err on the side of caution.

Stanislaus County communicable disease nurse Trudi Prevette has never seen Winters and her bats. Although Prevette applauds the effort to educate children, she's not sure that bats should be removed from their cages.

"I know we'd be more comfortable if they were left inside," she said.

At Modesto's Great Valley Museum, which sometimes puts on shows by Winters and her bats, outreach education coordinator Denise Godbout-Avant said she is outraged at San Joaquin County's decision.

The number of bats in the state has plummeted, Godbout-Avant said, in part because people fear and exterminate bats. Presentations, such as those Winters delivers, help people understand the role that the animals play in the environment, she said.

"I believe the people of San Joaquin County are being deprived," she said. "I don't want the public exposed to rabies, either, but I believe education is the solution."

More information about bats and rabies is available from the CDC at www.cdc.gov, and from Bat Conservation International at www.batcon.org.

Bee staff writer Kerry McCray can be reached at 578-2358 or kmccray@modbee.com.

Reprinted by permission of Modesto Bee.