squeaks and rustlings

[dragonlady7]

dawn, not my strong suit

via https://ift.tt/3eOcS6U

So this house’s walls are full with at least one, possibly two
colonies of Little
Brown Bats <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/little_brown_bat>. They’re a
fascinating species, wonderful insect control, and very, very cute; we
researched them when last year they had a nursery in the chimney in the
living room and then as the babies were just about learning to fly a whole
bunch of them fell down into the (inert) gas log fireplace in there and
then were in the living room and we had to rescue them.

anyway, Farmsister and Kid had an experience the other day where they found
one trapped on the porch, and saved it with a cardboard box and got it to
the maple tree in the yard and then waited until dusk for its friends to
come find it and help it get home. See, Little Brown Bats can’t take off
from the ground– they need to drop a small distance in order to catch air
with their wings and fly. And he’d gotten on the porch somehow, and all the
posts are painted wood and too slippery for him to climb, so he was stuck,
and it was day, and he was sleepy, and somehow the cats hadn’t found him.

Last night I was super super tired so when at midnight something started
squeaking and rustling at midnight, I crawled out of bed, turned the light
on, looked blearily around, and when I couldn’t find it (the noise stopped
once the light was on), I gave up and turned the fan on higher to cover it.
It continued intermittently all night, and finally I woke at 4:30, more
coherent, and went and looked again.

It was two Little Brown Bats, who had somehow wound up in the little
stairwell in this room. There were some gift bags tucked into the stairwell
which kind of doubles as a closet off the kitchen, and they were trying to
climb the giftbags.

(under the cut: my extremely not effective method of dealing with this,
plus a bonus cute picture not of these bats)

I stood there in confusion not really knowing what to do, but figured,
well, I can’t leave them there. (I should have; during the day they’d’ve
been quiescent and I could’ve just scooped them into a box.) I went down
the stairs and pushed the door open, thinking vaguely that I’d… I don’t
know… get past them and then pick up the gift bag they were both on, and,
sure, that’s fine, carry it outdoors, sure? Anyway one of them saw the door
was open and just crawled over there and dropped into flight off the step.

Great! Now the bat was flying around the kitchen. That was exactly what I
had not needed to happen, and yet, I had done precisely what was necessary
to allow it to happen. Do recall, it was four thirty in the morning, and i
had just awoken after a night of not great sleep. There’s an open door, I
thought vaguely, and then I was like, with a screen on it, so that’s not
going to work.

I went down and closed the doors out of the kitchen into other rooms, and
then opened the door to the outside, and propped it open. Done, I thought,
except, well, one of the rooms didn’t have a door to close, and the bat did
not appear to be able to see that the screen door was propped open; it flew
past it again and again and again and again. Nope.

I tried to shoo it towards the door. You cannot shoo a bat. They are fast.
They just fly in circles.

I went and picked up the gift bag, to which the other bat was clinging. It
was super upset but stayed there. I carried it out the door, and hesitated
on the edge of the porch, intending vaguely to go to the tree there. Before
I could step off into the light rain, the bat leapt off the bag and was
gone, safely outdoors.

I went back in. The other bat was still flying circuits of the kitchen,
avoiding the open door.

It was at this point that I registered that I was in my underwear, and it
was four forty-five, and people get up not early here but like, I’m not
sure how early. Two of the household’s three cats had come in and visited
their food bowls, excited by the door being opened– I should mention, there
is a door with a magnetic screen flap they can come and go through at will,
just across the room, and so there was no reason for them to be in any way
excited about another door being open, as it was one to a room they could
already access, but like. This situation did not need cats, but they were
so pumped about Unexpected New Door Opening that they were not registering
the flying thing flitting around their house.

Anyway, I lost track of the bat and thought it was outdoors, so I went
around opening all the doors, and then it started flying around again
because obviously it had not gone outdoors, so I had to close all the doors
again, and while I was doing that i lost it again. I turned on all the
lights and wandered around the kitchen in my underwear brandishing a pizza
box but eventually I gave up, closed the kitchen door, and came back up
here. I do not really want the household to awaken to me in my underpants
in the kitchen. If they awaken to find a bat still in the kitchen then they
can deal with it.

These guys are very cute but not very bright and I cannot begin to imagine
how they wound up in my stairwell. I hope this does not become habit.

Anyway i taught Farmkid to sew the day I arrived and she and her mother
collaborated to make a stuffed Little Brown Bat and here is an adorable
photo of it. (Her mom sewed the body and she sewed the wings out of felt.)

[image description: a small blonde white child in a pink t-shirt makes a
silly face (this is what she thinks you should do in photographs,
currently) while holding a life-size stuffed toy of a Little Brown Bat with
a fuzzy brown body and brown felt wings, wings spread across her chest.]