adventures in home-owning

[truepenny]

So, a couple weeks ago, heres_luck and I were hearing odd noises coming from the attic. "Mouse?" said h.l. "Bird?" said I. And then the noises stopped, and we assumed that whatever had been making them had either found its way out or died, and forgot about it.

Yesterday, Mirrorthaw had a sudden spasm of cleaning (I helped, but it wasn't my spasm and I won't claim it was), in the course of which he decided to take a number of boxes up to the attic.

Off he goes.

And back he comes.

"I know what those noises were," he says.

When he opened the attic door, he found two bats lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs, rather like Whatsisface in the Paths of the Dead. The way is shut. We assumed they were ex-bats, because, hello, lying there not moving rather than hanging from something, so, having corralled various enterprising quadrupeds who would've liked to help, Mirrorthaw gets the gloves, the bucket, and the piece of cardboard and goes up to deal with them.

I lurk in the hallway.

"Oh," he says. "They're not dead."

There ensues an afternoon's worth of trying to find out what the heck you do when you find live bats in your attic.

A consultation of phonebook and websites revealed that the town in which we live has no Animal Control officer or department or anything. Mirrorthaw, who is librarian-spawn, intelligently suggested calling the reference desk of the local library.

Voice-mail system ... circulation desk ... "I have a question that I think I need a reference librarian for," I said.

"Well, why don't you run it past me?" says the voice on the other end.

So I do.

Pause.

"Oh."

Another pause.

"Yah, you need Reference for that."

So she puts me through to the reference desk, where I propound my question again. "Oh," says the reference librarian. "Give me a minute." In fact, I end up giving her my phone number, and she calls back, suggesting I call County Dispatch, and they can send a Humane Officer.

Which I do, and get an unhelpful, mumbling guy who tells me that the Humane Officers won't deal with wild animals unless they're hurt. Have I tried the Police Department? No. Well, have I tried the Yellow Pages? No. They're not pests, they're bats, I mutter after I've hung up the phone.

I do try the police department. They also suggest commercial pest control.

So back to square one. And the bats are still lying there.

Mirrorthaw takes pictures.

I try the neighbors. One set isn't home; the other is amazed and sympathetic, but doesn't have any more idea than we do of how to solve our problem. He does say they're probably hibernating, which confirms my vague memory that that's something bats do. I feel slightly better.

Still at square one.

But I am a child of my era, and a geeky child at that. The internet is out there, like a patient etherized upon a table, and Google is my friend. I knew that somebody out there somewhere had to have a web page to answer the suddenly pressing question: What do you do if you find a bat in your house?

I Google "bats." The first site up is Bat Conservation International, which is a beautiful site, but did not actually help me. Worked my way past the usual assortment of educational sites, the Bat Conservation Trust, which can't help me, since they're in the U.K., a Creationist bat site, the Organization for Bat Conservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Endangered Species bat page ... and by some method which I can no longer recreate, I found Batworld.

The first item in their menu is Found a bat?, and the second item is Local Rescue. Within mere moments I am on the phone with a nice man who says the best thing to do is for him to come and get the bats.

There is much rejoicing.

Half an hour later, the nice man and his equally nice wife show up. We lead them to our bats. They identify them as Big Brown Bats, sex them (a male and a female), observe that they look healthy, take the opportunity for a little public education--the male bat protests sleepily at being the demonstration dummy, but is very obliging about spreading his wing--and tuck them safely away in what looks like a padded envelope in a mesh carrier. They'll house them through the winter and feed them mealworms if the bats want to eat. They also take a quick inspection tour of our attic, which is unfinished and frankly kind of a fright, since the previous owners (a.) didn't get all their junk out of it and (b.) laid insulation on the floor not unlike to a carpet. They hear other bats, but can't actually find them, which is not surprising, but also not entirely comforting. They leave us with their business card, a brochure, a postcard of a Big Brown bat, and earnest adjurations to call them if we find more bats.

We promise willingly; I spend the evening Googling to learn more about bats (and find, incidentally, some variously stunning and charming pictures).

Happy ending.


ETA: also GIP.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Hooray! I am charmed as well.

When I was a kid we had a bat come down our chimney. Dad got out the catcher's mask and tennis racket (at least so my memory tells me) and chased it out of the house. This sounds much happier.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. This was quite peaceful and nonthreatening, really.

And the bats weren't hurt or distressed, which makes me feel so much better about the whole thing.

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

Very happy ending. Here in the UK, bats are protected, and if you find them in your attic, too bad if you had plans for your attic, although I think they can be relocated by authorised bat handlers (they have to be authorised because of the protected status of the bats). There was some concern at one point while our house was being sorted out as to whether there might be bats in the loft. Luckily it turned that there weren't.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Several species of bats in the USA are endangered, so, yes, you have to get the right sort of people to come and deal with them.

We are contemplating putting up bat-houses to see if we can encourage them to roost somewhere other than our attic.

It's not that I don't want the bats. They're extremely cool animals, and hell, they eat mosquitoes. I just don't want them in my house.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I've been told that if you have a bat who is flying around, you can get it to leave by throwing a crumpled up bit of paper out the window -- it'll follow the paper out. Of course, that's no help whatsoever with hibernating bats and if they live in your house, they'll only be back later, after a snack and a movie.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

From what I've found online, if the bat is flying, blocking off other exits to the room and opening a window will pretty much do the job. They don't really want to be inside any more than we want them there.

But, yeah. These little guys weren't going anywhere under their own steam.

And when we get around to finishing the attic, I think we're going to want to have a talk with our nice bat conservation people about exclusion.

[libskrat]

Better the attic than the belfry, I guess.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, if we had a belfry ...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's right. You've been dreaming about bats lately.

... I've always known that a junk-filled attic is a pretty good metaphor for the subconscious, but this seems a bit excessive. *g*

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Yay, bats!

The swaddled bat photo is completely adorable.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes!

Baby spectacled flying foxes.

The Bat Zone (http://www.batconservation.org/content/MeetBatZonesbats.html) has fantastic pictures.

[libskrat]

Flittermouse icon! Coolness!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

When our cat in Lancaster brought in a bat and killed it, carandol was horrified, because he knew they were a protected species and therefore he imagined someone would be coming and taking the cat away.

[slithytove.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm terrified of bats.

Sorry to be the heavy here, but in North America, bats are a major reservoir of rabies. (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5302a4.htm) Rabies is uniformly lethal, and a fairly horrible way to die. Rabies is rare. However, even minimal contact with a rabid animal can transmit the disease. For example, it is recommended that if a person is in the same room with a bat, and cannot be sure they have NOT been bitten (for example, because they were asleep), that person should receive rabies immunization.

There have been many cases individuals dying of rabies who were found to have been near bats (e.g., bats living in their attic), but who have no record of having been bitten.

Bats terrify me.

Sorry to be the downer. But please, PLEASE be careful with bats. Any contact with a bat -- at least in the Americas -- by a person who has not been fully immunized against rabies should prompt an IMMEDIATE call to the local public health department.

That having been said, I now go to do final edits on my short story about bat-riding warriors. Mmmm, bats.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually, I know that. The bats were handled only by the licensed bat-rehabilitators, and there have been no bats in the living areas of the house.

Even when sick, bats are not aggressive, unlike, say, skunks and raccoons, which are also major carriers of rabies. But they bite when threatened, like any wild animal, and they seem to be particularly good at crawling into places to hide, like bed-covers or wood-piles, where human beings can encounter them unawares.

And it isn't minimal contact with a rabid animal that transmits the disease, it's their saliva. The reason bats are particularly alarming in this regard is that their teeth are so small their bites aren't visible. So if someone is asleep and the bite doesn't wake them, when they do wake up, they'll have no evidence that they were bitten.

(And, more hopefully, this (http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/local_18766941.shtml) is something the bat-rehabilitators told me about. Potentially very good news.)