Mexican free-tailed bat (the kind we have in SCV) | Courtesy Evelyne Vandersande

Blame the unseasonably warm weather. Blame the spirit of Bela Lugosi. Just don’t blame us.

Rabies season got off to an early start this year.

Los Angeles County’s first rabid bat of 2014 turned up in February in a swimming pool in Agua Dulce. It was dead.

No. 2 turned up in a backyard in Los Angeles, also in February. A cat found it.

Last year’s rabid bat season didn’t start until March, and only two were found countywide before April. By November, nearly half of the county’s identified rabid bats – 14 of 33 – had turned up in the Santa Clarita Valley. And that’s weird. The SCV holds less than 3 percent of the county’s human population. (In 2012, the first one showed up in January – in Santa Clarita, naturally – but the second wasn’t ID’d until March and the third came in April.)

It’s weird for an additional reason. Rabies has been on the rise the past four years, and public health officials don’t know why. They’ve been collecting data since the 1960s, and a “normal” year sees just 8 to 12 cases in the whole county. They used to say 8 to 10; apparently they’ve had to adjust the average upward to factor in the “new normal,” if indeed it is.

2013: The Year in Rabid Bats

If you’re accustomed to reading our rabid bat reports – goodness knows we’ve written a lot of them in recent years – then you know the drill: Bats are the most common carriers of rabies, but far fewer than 1 percent of bats have rabies.

If you see a bat flying during the daytime, or bothering Fido, or hovering around Fifi’s food dish, or flopping around on the ground, or dead in the water (as in Agua Dulce), don’t touch it. Call Animal Control.

There’s been only one case of a bat biting a human in L.A. County in recent times, and it happened two years ago in Acton when a sick bat fell out of a tree and landed on somebody’s shoulder. Ouch.

2014 to date

Actually the bite is like a tiny pin-prick and it’s not clear you would know it if happened. (Although if you see a bat clutching your shoulder with its mouth, that should be a clue.) If you think there’s a chance you’ve been bitten, seek medical attention right away. The battery of rabies shots isn’t as grueling as it was in your grandparents’ day.

Also be sure Fido and Fifi’s shots are current. Generally, if Animal Control thinks your pet has been bitten – and certainly in Santa Clarita, dogs seem to like to run around with dead bats in their mouths –  they’ll be subject to 30 days’ home quarantine if they’ve had all their shots. Otherwise it’s off to the pound for six months for observation.

Finally, not that there’s much water in California, but don’t leave water standing around. It breeds mosquitoes, and bats are attracted to them. Plus, some of those mosquitoes carry West Nile virus.

We’d like to say that’s a story for another day, but L.A. County’s first West Nile virus death of 2014 (a dead crow) was reported Thursday in Long Beach…