Mom, can we keep him???

[imagineer]

Look who I woke up this weekend...


He (or she) was hibernating among a pile of sticks and kindling I keep for starting fires in my barn wood stove. At first, it felt like I was holding some soft bark or mulch. I also heard a faint hiss, much like the sound ice cubes make in a drink. Then the little terror spread it's wings, while still in my hand. Needless to say, I dropped it.

After regaining my composure, I started checking all the nooks and crannies in the barn and found maybe 20 more bats hunkered down for the winter. I think I'll leave the rest be and they can leave on their own in the spring.

 

[ChaseDE]

did it just sit there like that long enough to get a picture? haha

 

[LX-Markham]

LOL, all I could think of was Count Floyd: "Ooooo! Very scary, eh kids?"

 

[FJ 432]

Where's Ozzie when you need him?

 

[Randy in Maine]

Congrats!! What kind of bat is that anyway?

Most bats (notably the Little Brown) are really endangered here with the "white nose fungus" thing.

 

[imagineer]

did it just sit there like that long enough to get a picture? haha

Actually, yes. It was moving very slow. Probably a combination of waking from hibernation and the barn being at about 25 degrees. I donned a pair of heavy welding gloves, scooped it up and took it outside.

There are a bunch of left over straw bales stacked outside the barn facing south, under a roof eave. I put this guy in a gap between two bales and pressed them together. Hopefully he stay's warm enough.

Like I said earlier, I'll leave his relatives still asleep inside alone for now.

 

[imagineer]

Congrats!! What kind of bat is that anyway?

I'm guessing he (or she) is another Little Brown Bat. Our place is silly with them all summer.

 

[930dreamer]

Cool and they eat a lot of bugs.

 

[Shootinok]

Nice. I actually might put up a bat house when my barn is done - those little dudes eat mosquitoes by the thousands every day!

 

[ihateminimumwage]

Actually, yes. It was moving very slow. Probably a combination of waking from hibernation and the barn being at about 25 degrees. I donned a pair of heavy welding gloves, scooped it up and took it outside.

There are a bunch of left over straw bales stacked outside the barn facing south, under a roof eave. I put this guy in a gap between two bales and pressed them together. Hopefully he stay's warm enough.

Like I said earlier, I'll leave his relatives still asleep inside alone for now.

Very cool of you.

 

[EOC_Jason]

Google "Bat Box" or "Bat House" and maybe build you one of those. Important note is don't use any oil-based paints or stains (water-based only) or the bats will avoid it.

Bats are great for eating all the bugs & insects... especially mosquitoes! It's cool watching them head out at night as the sun sets.

EDIT - Just found pics of one I built for a friend. The pinkish color was a mis-tint markdown at the store and was the only exterior latex they had. lol

 

[imagineer]

Google "Bat Box" or "Bat House" and maybe build you one of those.

Mrs. Imagineer already added making one to my to-do list...

 

[APEowner]

I had one fall out of a third floor ceiling I was pulling down. It was fast asleep and I of caught it as it fell and reflexively tossed it out the window. The poor thing was about 5' off the ground when it woke up and started flying. I would have felt terrible if I'd accidentally killed it.

 

[Baw335]

Likely a big brown bat based on where you found it. Little Browns usually hibernate in caves and as Randy said, are being hit hard with white nose. These guys are pretty interesting critters that often get a bad rap. It's like having a black rat snake in your garage, best mouser ever once you get over a little shock factor.

 

[Beater5liter]

Think I would have needed an underwear change if I looked down and found that in my hand after digging in the firewood stack!

 

[M-technik-3]

Bat houses are perfect along the edges of the woods for mosquito control. We have a few in our wood for just that reason. I don't want them in my barn but the woods yes please.

 

[imagineer]

Think I would have needed an underwear change if I looked down and found that in my hand after digging in the firewood stack!

I'd like to say I handled it with calm and maturity, but . . . ever see Ace Ventura 2?

From 2:02 to 2:16; this accurately depicts my reaction.

For your reference, from 0:30 to 1:03 is a fair representation of me, after gathering my composure, going to look for other bats.

 

[eae197]

we used to have them around but the white nose has about obliterated the population here. they are voracious mosquito eaters. last fall one with rabies was found near where I live, they do often have that problem, avoid being bitten by one. Hopefully they recover from the white nose thing, very beneficial little flying mammal.

 

[Kaizen]

Had the little things in my attic for years. Every year they would work into the house and you have to kill them. Not fun being woken up by them. Important note is they return to the place where they are born every year in spring if they are migratory. Very hard to get rid of them. Esp if there is young in their roost. Bat **** has bad stuff in it so not good in a shop or house.
Funny story my daughter was 8 and we were running around with brooms trying to knock one down. I hit it and it smacked into her. At school in Monday she told the class her dad hit her with a bat. Thankfully she explained it


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[mgilde13]

Similar story. A while back, some friends and I were out for a ride on our motorcycles and stopped at local watering hole with an outdoor patio. As were sitting there, a young lady was kind of checking out my buddy, gave him a smile then a look of horror came across her face and she let out an ear piercing scream. Turns out, my buddy had caught a bat in the hood of his sweatshirt as were riding and it decided to climb out after we had stopped. He remembered hitting it as we were riding but he thought that it was a leaf falling from a tree. We took the bat and placed it on a tree near the patio to recover so it could keep feasting on the other "Minnesota state bird" that we have in abundance here.

 

[jumbojak]

I'd like to say I handled it with calm and maturity, but . . . ever see Ace Ventura 2?

From 2:02 to 2:16; this accurately depicts my reaction.

For your reference, from 0:30 to 1:03 is a fair representation of me, after gathering my composure, going to look for other bats.

When I was a kid my mom was taking sheets off the line at dusk and there was a bat hanging from the line under one of the sheets. She flapped the sheet off and the bat took flight and did get caught in her hair. She started stomping one foot while screaming and smacking at the side of her head. That was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.

 

[malibu101]

Years ago I was at a guys house and his back concrete patio had MANY moth wings on it. Not whole moths, just the wings. It struck me as so odd I said something about it.

He was like yeah that's normal. There is a dusk to dawn light above the patio and of course moths fly to the light. He told me the bats eat the moth body but not the wings.

Sounded plausible to me but I've never seen or heard of it again.

 

[58Yeoman]

Similar story. A while back, some friends and I were out for a ride on our motorcycles and stopped at local watering hole with an outdoor patio. As were sitting there, a young lady was kind of checking out my buddy, gave him a smile then a look of horror came across her face and she let out an ear piercing scream. Turns out, my buddy had caught a bat in the hood of his sweatshirt as were riding and it decided to climb out after we had stopped. He remembered hitting it as we were riding but he thought that it was a leaf falling from a tree. We took the bat and placed it on a tree near the patio to recover so it could keep feasting on the other "Minnesota state bird" that we have in abundance here.

Same here. I was riding my Goldwing at dusk, and a bat came through the front open area, and landed on my leg. I brushed him off and away we both went.

 

[imagineer]

A few years ago, my brother-in-law decided to show off a bit and demonstrated how to "fish" for bats.

At dusk when the bats in West Bridgewater, MA started showing up, he took a tiny pebble and threw it pretty high into the air. It was impressive how quickly the bats zero'd in on the pebble and darted for it. Before reaching the pebble, the bats would determine it wasn't food and would veer off for another target. The performance drew quite the crowd, and from the comments you could hear folks getting more at ease with concept of bats flying overhead.

My then 6 year old niece wanted in on the fun, grabbed a fist full of pea gravel and underhand cast it skyward. The problem, her toss was only about 12' in the air, and was directly over the crowd of spectators.

In a flash, there were a dozen or so bats diving at the adults, making them scatter and scream. I doubt there was any actual bat-to-human contact, but there was plenty of carnage as the crowd of spectators scrambled for safety.

 

[pcmeiners]

Happen to like bats also, but I have a rabies story...

My big sister worked in Houston Children's hospital. Guy comes in with symptoms which they can not figure out initially, took a couple days before it was diagnosed rabies. Guy was vacationing on one of the islands in a beach hut, no screens, bat bite him during the night. It was too late for the guy, he died a few days later. CDC personnel came, every person who had contact with him had to have the rabies inoculation.

 

[R. Deschain]

Careful in handling them. If bitten by a bat, seek help immediately. start the vaccine. Really, really. Rabies is a real thing and even in the 21st century it is 99.99999999....% fatal. It is labeled by the CDC as the most Deadly disease on earth, with a higher mortality than Ebola or Pancreatic cancer... There was one 15 year old girl in 2004 that was infected after being bitten by a rabid bat she had picked up during a church service in Fond du Lac, Wisc. She was the first person in known human history to survive a full blown rabies infection and since her there has only been a handful of survivors - one handfull - using the same treatment that worked for her. It is called the Milwalkie Protocal and still has a very, very low success rate.

 

[Kaizen]

Similar story. A while back, some friends and I were out for a ride on our motorcycles and stopped at local watering hole with an outdoor patio. As were sitting there, a young lady was kind of checking out my buddy, gave him a smile then a look of horror came across her face and she let out an ear piercing scream. Turns out, my buddy had caught a bat in the hood of his sweatshirt as were riding and it decided to climb out after we had stopped. He remembered hitting it as we were riding but he thought that it was a leaf falling from a tree. We took the bat and placed it on a tree near the patio to recover so it could keep feasting on the other "Minnesota state bird" that we have in abundance here.

If he had said " I am batman" on cue it would have been epic


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[ozyborn]

I keep seeing The great Outdoors clip.

 

[Richard Cranium]

I have a couple of bad stories. when I was a kid, my mother's step parents had an Orchard and we would go out and help them harvest the fruit. We would find fruit bats and put them in a metal coffee can and take them to school for our science teachers.
A few years after I got married, on night I am woken up by my wife that there was some thing circling our bed. As I looked up I saw a bat circling. So I got up and opened the back door and used a window screen to get it out of the house. Do you know how hard it is to get back to sleep after some thing like that.

 

[Toothaker]

LOL, all I could think of was Count Floyd: "Ooooo! Very scary, eh kids?"

Not every day I hear someone quote SCTV. Excellent!

 

[Ryanbabz71]

I keep seeing The great Outdoors clip.

Lol great movie


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[bwringer]

"I am the terror that flaps in the night!"

Looks like a pretty healthy little critter -- hope the interrupted nap doesn't cause any problems. Hope you can convince them to move to a different place to roost, too.

 

[Revelations]

[emoji482]

Sent from a Galaxy far far away.

 

[olytdi]

That's a Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus). It was in torpor as were the others in your wood pile. It was relatively inactive when disturbed because its metabolism had been slowed with the lowering of body temperature. It takes a period of shivering to warm up enough from torpor to be regularly active again. That process burns a lot of fat. That's why bothering hibernating bats can be lethal -- they can starve prior to having a decent food source available in Spring. The whole mosquito eating thing with bats is a bit overblown. They'd much prefer a nice fatty moth than a tiny watery mosquito though surely mosquitoes are consumed.

They're way common, very well and widely distributed, and not at all rare. They've increased their abundance and distribution due probably to the expansion of people and their dwellings across the continent. They're a bit of a badass bat. They're feisty in the hand and will bite if handled. They maintain a reservoir of rabies though that particular species has been implicated in only one human rabies case ever, I believe.

Most terrestrial rabies (skunks, foxes, etc.), actually comes from bat strains....but I digress...

It's nice to hear so much appreciation and little persecution in this thread. Now if we could only get the spider and snake wussies to convert...

 

[TK-421]

Now if we could only get the spider and snake wussies to convert...

Just so long as they come up with a cure for the as of yet unnamed phobia of snake bites/snake venom.

 

[EOC_Jason]

During the warm months I see at least one black widow around my house every month. Always where I don't want them to be too, like in my hose faucet handle, or on my trash cans... I get out the carb cleaner & lighter... Sorry, those are no bueno...

Other spiders I leave alone, it's just the ones that can kill me I don't like...

 

[KRB52]

I used to work with a guy a the power plant that had one of those bird calling things. He was messing around with it one night in the summer and saw a bat. He got the call to squeak very high and had the bat come towards him.

 

[Firebrick43]

According to an aquaintence they can actually hear shotgun shot coming at them and swerve before it hits them. He might just be a lousy shot to?

 

[Revelations]

During the warm months I see at least one black widow around my house every month. Always where I don't want them to be too, like in my hose faucet handle, or on my trash cans... I get out the carb cleaner & lighter... Sorry, those are no bueno...

Other spiders I leave alone, it's just the ones that can kill me I don't like...

Yep! Anything that can kill a grown man or make him wish he was dead, gets the boot. I understand bats carry rabies, but I rather not kill anything that flies. Bats do such an excellent job of insect control. Bumblebee's are also very important to our produce. They are getting close to being wiped out by pesticides.

My instant death list...

Black Widows or any spider that can cause death, or limb loss.

Tarantula Hawks! Thier stinger is a 1/2 long and they can sting through denim jackets.

Flies or any other bug that feeds on poop.

Mesquitos! They are responsible for thousands of deaths. The Panama canal almost didn't get built do to those lil things.

Rattlesnakes or anything that can kill 3 grown men with a single dose of venom.

As far as ocean critters, we have no oceans near Idaho. [emoji12]

Sent from a Galaxy far far away.

 

[EOC_Jason]

In Houston we had a pool. Sometimes at night you could see the bats come swooping in to get a drink of water. It was cool because you could stand right by the pool and they would be flying full speed and just whiz by you in the dark. They are very graceful flyers.