Bats - Part 2

(continued from Part 1)

Maybe they were mates and one had called to the other. Anyway, I stepped back inside, closed the doors, and stood for some time observing their behavior and wondering what to do about it. When they left the room and headed upstairs I raced after them. After securing the doors of the rooms where Tesi and Amadi were sleeping, I went into Asa's room and found him and his friend watching just one bat flying in circles. The three of us sat there for a while, admiring the bat, trading animal stories, and discussing possible strategies. At one point the bat did come to rest on the woodwork of a window frame. (It's quite striking how small they get when the wings are folded up--suddenly more like a mouse than a bird.) I made one attempt at capture it as it hung there, using a modification of the box method (#1), but the attempt failed because the thing was not sound asleep and saw me coming. Eventually Asa's friend's mother showed up and asked us why we didn't just open a window. I had a ready answer for that, of course, but in the end we gave it a try; and in fact it wasn't long before the bat found its way out. We never did know what happened to the other one, but it stands to reason that whatever secret route they have for getting into the house would also serve for getting out.

Asa's Bat: Sometimes Method #4 works just fine: you open a door and it has the desired effect of making the inside and outside bat population densities as nearly equal as possible. Asa once found a ground-floor lap-flying bat when the rest of the family had retired for the night, and when he opened a sliding door (staying low to the ground and looking anxiously over his shoulder, he says) it worked like a charm.

To return to the other night: When I had finished reminding Tesi and myself that I was not so very much afraid of bats, I stuck my head into the room and verified that indeed there was a bat flying in circles. I stepped inside, crouching a bit, and closed the door behind me. My plan was to open that other door leading to the balcony, already mentioned in the Broomstick episode. Nika was in the room, and I was surprised that she wasn't paying more attention to the bat. My first step was to simplify my life by getting her out of there; not only did I not relish playing Josh to her Magick, but I didn't want to have to think about her sneaking out on the balcony or getting underfoot. I caught her without difficulty and put her out in the hall, then opened the outside door and sat down in a corner to watch. The bat continued circling. My inner monologue went something like this:

"It keeps almost finding the way out. One of these times ... Hey, watch where you're going, buddy! ... Of course, I know it would never blunder into me--it has echolocation, right? ... Wow, that time it almost it found the door ... People always think a bat's gonna get tangled in your hair; that's a myth ... You can hear their wings, can't you? Not like owls, with those special stealth feathers ... Hey, you're nowhere near the Jesus, watch where you're going! ... Just remember, Tom, that little thing is much more afraid of you than you are of it ... Bats aren't even blind, either; that's another myth ... No way would it bump into me ... "

I got cautiously to my feet and opened the other half of the double doors, then returned to my corner.
"Oh, man, you were halfway out the door that time, what's the matter with you?! ... All right, I can wait. Just have to wait. Just a matter of time ... Not here, you fool, the door's over there! ... Oh, unbelievable, here comes another one."

Yes, now there were two bats circling. There didn't seem to be much to do except watch and wait. I was losing patience, talking out loud, whining, pleading. The most excruciating moment was when one of them went out and then came right back in. But eventually, one at a time, they found their way out.

The end.

Bats - Part 1

The other night Tesi called to me from the top of the stairs, quietly so as not to wake Amadi. "There's a bat in our room." I went to the stairs. "Did you say a bat?" "Yes, a bat." "OK, I'm coming." "I don't do well with bats," she said a little plaintively.* I remarked that I do well with them in the sense of being brave but not always in the sense of being effective. "Is it flying or sleeping?" "It's flying." "Well then I guess I'll just have to open some doors or windows and hope it goes better than that other time."

In fact there have been several other times. Here are some of the visiting bats that I remember best:
The Show and Tell Bat: This was about fifteen years ago, in a different house. I found it one morning asleep on the wall of a ground-floor room, clinging somehow to an apparently sheer vertical surface. Method #1: I got an open cardboard box, pressed it against the wall to enclose the bat, slid the box gently down to nudge the poor thing off the wall, and quickly popped a cover on before it could gather its wits and fly away. It was a cover that you could see through--a square of window screen material. Moved by an urge to share it with more than the immediate family, I decided to carry it down the street to Asa's preschool and show it to all the kids there. The teacher did not seem pleased with this highly educational idea of mine, but I assured her that I would keep the lid on. One interesting surprise: on the way to school the bat began loudly yelling at me. This was not echolocation; the sounds were well within the range of human hearing. I suppose it was expressing annoyance about the confinement or the bumpy ride, or both.

Last week, in a waiting room, I made the acquaintance of one of those children who love facts. He was asking Amadi "Do you know how many insects a bat can catch in an hour?" She made no effort to hold up her end of the conversation, so I cheerfully took up the slack. "I don't know. It must be a lot." "It's between 100 and 1000." "Wow, that is a lot!" I said. "Guess how many!" he pressed. "Oh, I thought we were done. It's a specific number?" "It's 6oo." He then moved on to "Do you know what animal can jump the highest?" Several of us started guessing: a kangaroo? some kind of bug? We were getting nowhere. He clarified that he meant jumping straight up in the air, and then he gave us a big hint: it's a kind of cat. More wrong guesses: leopard? snow leopard? We gave up. He said it was a tie between two African cats: the cerval and the caracol. I forget how high he said--something like fifteen feet, maybe. I asked why they jump in the air. He said it was to catch birds--guinea fowl. I told him that I'm sure our cat Nika would love to be able to jump that high, especially when a bat gets in the house.

The Wastebasket Bat: This was in our current house, maybe five years ago. I was alone on the ground floor of the house, working. Out of the corner of my eye I was getting glimpses of something moving in a darker room nearby, but it didn't really get my attention until I noticed that it had Nika's attention. We watched it travel the length of the house a number of times, Nika making the occasional spring at it as it went by, but neither of us had any really constructive ideas. After a while the bat flew upstairs and started doing more laps up there. Method #2: I managed to close a key door at the right moment, thus isolating the problem, and went to bed. In the morning I cautiously entered the room, closed the door behind me, and searched until I found the sleeping bat. It was in a wastebasket rather than on a wall, so I just moved it to the back garden, telling it that I was in no hurry for the wastebasket and it could sleep as long as it liked.

A cat that I used to know caught a bat once. Her name was Magick, and she had a haughty and regal bearing, and she belonged (although she would never have put it that way) to my ex-wife, before I did. The incident occurred before the beginning of our acquaintance, so I have the story second- or third-hand. When a bat showed up one day in the big house where Magick was living with several humans, she caught it (Method: Unknown). No doubt she would have loved to show it to Karen, but she couldn't find Karen, so she took it to Josh. Josh was not someone who did well with cats, let alone bats. Finding him sitting on the floor of his room surrounded by household papers, she proudly laid her prize, bleeding and still flapping feebly, right on top of his Accounts Payable. I believe that he screamed--again well within the audible frequency range.

The Broomstick Bat: This one was found sleeping directly above our bed one morning, holding on to a sort of high rafter. So the bat was not pre-packed for transport this time, nor would it be easy to adapt the box trick without a big flat surface behind the bat. Also it was going to be too high for me to reach unless I did something crazy like putting a stepladder on the bed. Method #3: I decided to prod it with a stick and see if it might be persuaded to hold on to the other end. The bare end of a broomstick only caused it to shuffle sideways in its sleep, so I tried the other end. When poked with broomstraws the bat became seriously annoyed. It turned its beady eyes on me. Horrible chittering imprecations issued from a tiny open mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. After a brief retreat to calm my nerves, I returned to the task. The bat was still angry, but this time it grasped the straws and let go of the rafter. Moving slowly, I opened the door to the balcony and stepped out, holding the bat before me on the broom like a pizza on a wooden paddle. I gave it a little shake, thinking it would fly away; it fell like a stone to the paved surface below, never even unfolding its wings. Sick with the thought of tiny broken bones, I hurried through the house and out to the driveway. Apparently it was uninjured: it took hold of a twig that I offered it and then consented to transfer itself to a nearby sapling in a quiet out-of-the way spot, where it hung itself up and went back to sleep.

That Other Time: This was a couple of years ago, I think. It began, like the Wastebasket story, with a bat flying laps on the ground floor. Remembering a previous success, I tried closing doors to reduce the range of flight, but there was no way to seal off the area. The bat flew great loops in the big front room while I watched. It occurred to me that if I were to (Method #4) open the French doors it would be bound to find its way out sooner or later. Of course, a few bugs might fly in in the meantime, but that's a small price to pay, right? Or--here's a funny thought--more bats might fly in. Yeah, that would be funny. I crossed the room, ducking and flinching as appropriate. I think I may have even crawled on elbows and knees, like a soldier moving from trench to trench in an old war movie. I opened the doors. I stepped outside under the wistaria/wisteria arbor and stood waiting and watching. A minute later, sure enough, a second bat flew right past me and started circling the room with the first one.

(to be continued)

* I would like to point out that this is the same brave woman who once wrapped an osprey in a towel to help it get out of a screen porch, a thing I could not have imagined doing myself.