dragonlady7

There's a colony of Little Brown Bats living in the blocked-off chimney in the living room at the farmhouse.
There's a propane fireplace insert in there, and the chimney's inactive, so it's fine that they live there, and they're welcome to it. Except that the block that keeps the chimney closed off from the living room isn't very good, so sometimes they wind up inside the living room. And at the moment, there's been rather a dramatic influx of them.
Yesterday, Sister found one in the toybox, clinging onto a giant bright orange stuffed orca. She carried it carefully outdoors, but the bat just clung to the toy and wouldn't leave. We thought perhaps it was injured, or something, but mostly it seemed to be afraid of the light, and would crawl around to hide underneath the stuffed animal as the sun came around. We put a little jar lid of water next to it, but it never touched it.
Farmkid was so excited she wouldn't leave the thing alone. We told her she mustn't touch it, but she had to keep running over and looking at it and screeching about how excited she was, so the poor thing must've been terrified.
As dusk fell, she asked if she could stay up late to watch it fly away once it was dark out. Sister realized she hadn't had Farmkid stay up to see the fireflies at all yet, so she allowed it. And so we all sat out at the picnic table in the yard next to the grill-yard-appliance-thing that the orca was on with the bat attached, and watched.
Once the sun was down, we carefully removed the stuffed orca.
Nothing happened. The tiny bat stayed where it was, looking around and adjusting its position but making no move to fly or leave. Sister, who'd been researching on her phone, confided when Farmkid ran inside to get something that she was afraid it was a baby and couldn't fly, and she didn't know what would happen.

I went to bed at some point in this, because I had discovered water in my woodstove and knew I had to burn a fire in it to dry it out before going away this week. Which is a separate story. But, in the saga of the bats, my Sister told me this morning that when they gave up and came inside, she discovered two much larger little brown bats in the living room, so they carefully trapped them and threw them out various doors and windows. Both of them were large enough that they were flying around without any trouble, and in the excitement, they wound up over near the grill appliance thing the baby bat was on, and then there was much squeaking and interest all around, and Farmkid went to bed contented that the baby bat was discovered, at least.
When next Sister looked, the baby bat was gone. She said she couldn't imagine how it had been transported, if it couldn't fly, but I had looked up little brown bats and they really do carry pups to quite a large size, so it's perfectly likely that mama bat just picked up the pup and carried it home.

I haven't been able to capture a video of it, but the living room fireplace is an absolute cacophony of bat squeaks... until you step in the door of the living room, when they hear you and fall silent. And they hear well enough to know you haven't left, so they won't start up their racket again until you leave. But from the hallway, you can hear this quiet dull roar of extremely high-pitched noises.

We've got to block that chimney better. They can be in the chimney, but they don't want to be in the living room and we don't want them to be in the living room.
(I've just read the rest of the wikipedia page and it sounds like we've got a maternity colony in there, which is sort of terrifying, there could be thousands of the little blighters. Which, again, is good; the population was so devastated by white-nose syndrome, it'd be great if they're coming back. But not in the living room, guys. Stay outdoors, the mosquitoes are out there.)