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August 29, 2007

Bats Begone!

I thought it was a butterfly.

Ok, a really big butterfly.

Swooping around outside my kitchen window, in the middle of the afternoon.

I went closer to take a look, but it wasn't a butterfly. It was a little bat. Sneaking around the side of the house, I caught sight of it as it landed on the side of the garage and climbed under the trim. A cute little brown bat.

Living in my house, or at least on it.

Given all the other critters we keep finding since this house has been unoccupied for so long, I wasn't particularly surprised. But now I've started thinking all the little chirps and squeaks I hear in the afternoon and evening aren't birds after all. I thought hummingbird, but now I'm pretty sure its the bats.

I wasn't pleased they were living on the house, but I do like bats. They can eat hundreds of mosquitoes a hour and so I want to encourage them, just not in my house. I've read up on how to move a colony and I plan to get a bat box and train them into it instead, eventually. I need help so I have to wait for some human reenforcements.

Still, it was a cute little brown bat and I waited til that evening to share the news with Shane. He was working late so I was on Instant Messenger chatting with him about the cute little bat I saw outside when another freaking bat swooped down and buzzed me.

In my freaking kitchen.

Need I say I was surprised? I was talking about a bat and a bat appeared in my living room/kitchen. Flapping in circles over my head.

It was upset. Confused.

I was also upset. Upset enough to smash the keyboard with a few bat-oriented freakout terms to Shane and then I high-tailed it up into the safety of my bedroom to call him.

To make him google how I get a bat out of my living room. I called my dad but he just laughed at me for having all these wildlife issues.

Once I felt ready, I put on my armour. Long sleeve hoody, work gloves. Shoes. Jeans. Hat. I got the broom, which of course was not very long. More like a dust mop. I closed all the room doors I could to keep it contained, opened the outside doors and windows. Unfortunately, our entire downstairs is basically one big room. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out where the bat was, on the wall in the corner of the room. I tried to sweep it up and it took a few tries before it started flying around the room again, ignoring the exits I tried to keep open for it. Instead, it landed on the brick wall on the other side of the room. One thing Shane did find out online is that when they are flying around, its best to stand in a corner. This definately helped, since I could generally see where it was most of the time. I went over to it again, and swept it into the air. As it buzzed me again, I ducked, and when came back up, it was gone.

Unfortunately, I don't think it left. It was nowhere near a door.

Which means its still here.

Two days later, I am still walking around carefully, talking to the stupid little brown bat. Scrutinizing every knot, every burl in my wood paneling, I am careful before I turn on the ceiling fans I rely on to keep me comfortable here. I am considering taking everything out of the pantry to see if its in there.

My mother says I'm going to find a dead bat in a couple of days, but I don't have cats or anything. What I want is to see a bat-sized chew-hole in one of my screens, because I am not going to leave the windows open continually in case. I will only get more bats.

Because its baby bat season, you see. Late august is when all the babies born during the summer start learning to fly. And they get lost. Confused. They end up in houses.

They end up in my living room.

I see now I made a mistake trying to get it to fly around and find its own way out. It totally let me approach it. I should have just put a box over it and taken it outside myself. I was just a little too freaked at the time. It was a cute little bat, I just hadn't been expecting it in my living room.

BTW, the bat in the picture was not my bat. That's a zoo bat I took a picture of. My bat is tiny, a little brown bat, that looks like a little fuzzy brown mouse with wings. Sorry I didn't have time to take its picture while I was trying to chase it out of the house.

Posted by sorsha at August 29, 2007 3:52 PM