Bats out of the belfry, well at least one

[Olson185]

Very well written, Gothichome (Ron?). If HD had a cartoonist amongst its members I could see this as a serial cartoon adventure.

Yes, a "death match" is best executed with a tennis racket. Only...a too determined swing could leave a mess (known from experience). Like birds, bats are fragile and it doesn't take much to injure them.

When we bought our house we had one bat that grabbed onto the loops of the carpet and I couldn't slide a piece of cardboard under it, while a large jar kept it from flying away. If I had had any sort of cage or netting I could have tried more to perform a catch-and-release but that wasn't the way it went.

Factoid: Long Island has a major mosquito problem because the Hudson Valley caves our bats Winter in are infected with the fungus that causes "white nose syndrome". In the 8 yrs we've lived in this house, I've seen maybe 3-4 bats (1 in our house and the others flying around the street light).

Newsday (newspaper) article

White Nose Syndrome website

But, getting back to Gothichome's story...I'm curious how it ends.

[Gothichome]

Olson, a successful catch and release.

[Lily left the valley]

I had to set another bat free from our cellar just yesterday. With the full moon, it wasn't keen on flying out the open doors.

As I sat on the stairwell steps between the inner and outer doors, I watched it doing the following in random orders...
- lap around the cellar
- alternately perch near the top of the inner cellar door and squeak before it would do yet another lap about the cellar
- bounce smack against the one cellar window that still has plastic on it
- furtively bustle about the closed cellar door into the hallway and sometimes trying to get under the door
- swoop past me only to then sharp veer off the steps when it hit the moonlight

The second to last sweep, it almost passed the outer door threshold, then abruptly turned and swooped back and did one last lap before it finally went the rest of the way out. From the time I opened the inner cellar door, it took roughly 30 minutes to brave flying beyond the upper doorway into the moon lit night.

So far, we've had 3 bats in the house. 1 on the first floor, 2 in the cellar (I have to stop opening that outer cellar door too close to magic hours). So far, all three have escaped without our needing to touch them at all. I guess we're just lucky.

[Corsetière]

I had this experience at 1am recently too.
I suited up:


And I was able to successfully catch and release Carmilla using a towel, a box and some cardboard. lol!

I was really, really scared of her biting me or me hurting her accidentally by trying to get her out.


Interestingly enough my neighbor across the street has had their attic window open for months so Carmilla probably just relocated to their house...

What could possibly go wrong with this scenario:

[Manalto]

I don't know if it's true, but I was told that bats who get stuck in houses (other than deliberately nesting in attics or cellars) are usually the young, inexperienced ones who goof and fly where the grown-up bats know you shouldn't go. Carmilla may have had a rite-of-passage experience!

Your regulation bat gear looks absolutely correct. Some wear garlic around their necks, just in case.

Are you sure your neighbor doesn't have some sort of screening inside that window (and maybe an attic fan)? Doesn't it rain in Columbus? I wonder if they even know the window is open. It looks like something fell out of that window opening and slid down to the gutter.

[Corsetière]

I don't know if it's true, but I was told that bats who get stuck in houses (other than deliberately nesting in attics or cellars) are usually the young, inexperienced ones who goof and fly where the grown-up bats know you shouldn't go. Carmilla may have had a rite-of-passage experience!

Your regulation bat gear looks absolutely correct. Some wear garlic around their necks, just in case.

Are you sure your neighbor doesn't have some sort of screening inside that window (and maybe an attic fan)? Doesn't it rain in Columbus? I wonder if they even know the window is open. It looks like something fell out of that window opening and slid down to the gutter.

I felt bad for Carmilla. I think she was really scared.

Yeah the neighbor's window fell out. I just notice that they finally boarded it up but the window is still sitting on the roof.

[Lily left the valley]

I don't know if it's true, but I was told that bats who get stuck in houses (other than deliberately nesting in attics or cellars) are usually the young, inexperienced ones who goof and fly where the grown-up bats know you shouldn't go. Carmilla may have had a rite-of-passage experience!

Your regulation bat gear looks absolutely correct. Some wear garlic around their necks, just in case.

Are you sure your neighbor doesn't have some sort of screening inside that window (and maybe an attic fan)? Doesn't it rain in Columbus? I wonder if they even know the window is open. It looks like something fell out of that window opening and slid down to the gutter.

I felt bad for Carmilla. I think she was really scared.

Yeah the neighbor's window fell out. I just notice that they finally boarded it up but the window is still sitting on the roof.

I guess no one wanted to climb out and grab it. That looks like a pretty precarious slope.

I've been wondering, actually if the two in the cellar were youguns as this would be about the time, I think, that any would be grown to that point where they'd be out of wherever Momma was keeping them.

[mjt]

I had this experience at 1am recently too.
I suited up:

Love the improvised hazmat gear!

[mjt]

I've found a tennis racquet to be far more effective than a broom.

I could be mistaken, but I think Ron was trying to get the bat out of the house, not kill it.

I love bats. When they are not in my house.

We get no more than one a year and we had one the other night. It was stunned, but still alive, when I released it in the yard. It wasn't there in the morning, so either it recovered and flew away overnight or our family of Coopers Hawks got it.

[Manalto]

I don't think you're unusual for not wanting bats in your house, hence the stories about trying to get them out, rather than in. It's probably not much fun for the bat either.