STEVENSVILLE, Mont. - Upwards of 80 elementary school students may have to receive rabies vaccine shots after a parent brought an infected bat to school for show and tell.

The parent brought the dead bat to Stevensville Elementary School on Monday morning and allowed kindergarten and fifth-grade students in her children's classes to touch the animal after giving the group a short presentation, said Stevensville School Superintendent Kent Kultgen.

The woman, who reportedly works as a nurse in Missoula, Mont., offered the students a hand sanitizer after they handled the bat.

According to school and county health officials, the woman stopped by a soccer field later and showed the bat to additional people there.

In total, there may be up to 100 people who may be at risk for the disease, said Dr. Carol Calderwood of the Ravalli County, Mont., Health Department.

County health officials are in the process of interviewing people and evaluating their risk.

While the risk for actually contracting the disease from the dead bat is extremely low, school and county officials are taking the matter very seriously, Calderwood said.

"We are proceeding very carefully," she said. "We were in the assessment or triage phase Thursday. Public health officials are interviewing people and making an evaluation of risk on a case-by-case basis."

Rabies is a potentially fatal neurological virus that can be spread through saliva.

County health officials want to determine which students and adults may have touched the animal's mouth to determine who may need the month-long series of vaccine shots, she said.

"Kids were apparently putting their fingers in the bat's mouth," Calderwood said.