apparently, June is bat season (bats, part 1)
If you have a bat sighting in your house, what is the most important question to ask next?
“Miiiiiiike!!!”
Let me set this whole situation up for you.
We were going to bed one night last week. The Monday before the 4th of July, to be exact. I had forgotten something downstairs (my AirPods, if you must know), and it wasn’t too long after dark. (Yes, it was early. We were going to watch TV in bed.)
We have a fairly open floor plan on the first floor of our house. I don’t know about you guys, but I can walk around my house in the pitch dark like a blind person. I know exactly where everything is, how many steps it is from the bottom of my stairs to the refrigerator, etc., and because my golden retriever is 100% blind, we keep the downstairs picked up for her.
So I made my way down the stairs in the dark. I entered the large room in the back of the house, which consists of a family area (with a fireplace), a dining area, and the kitchen. Because this is where Jenny the blind golden sleeps, I did turn on a dim light so as not to step on her or trip over her.
About the moment I turned on the light, I heard a slight commotion in the corner of the family area by the fireplace. And then I spotted Jenny on the other side of the room, nowhere near the sound of the commotion.
We’ve had a bird fly into our house before, so when I saw the flying animal soar through the air in my direction from the fireplace to the kitchen, that was my first thought. That is also when I screamed incoherently.
That scream slowly morphed into a more coherent, “Miiiiiiike!!!”
I darted into the laundry room just off the kitchen. That is one of the only rooms with a door, and it was the closest.
Mike is yelling to me, trying to get me to form words he could actually understand as he made his way down the stairs. (He told me later he had simply assumed at first that I had discovered a large spider, because me screaming over spiders is a normal occurring event.)
I managed eventually to scream, “There’s a bird in the house.”
To which he cursed, then yelled, “That’s not a bird. That’s a bat!”
“How’d a bat get in here?” I yelled back from where I was barricaded.
“Is that really important right now?” (Also, if a bird flew in, it’s easy to assume a lone bat—a wayward traveler—might find his way in.)
“Good point! Should I call Steve? What do we do?” Steve is the pest control guy who lives next door to us.
At this point, the bat is doing laps around the large room in the back of the house.
“Yes. Call Steve. And open the door to the garage.”
Fuck! I didn’t have my phone with me. (Sorry about the language, but it was a very intense situation deserving of foul language.)
At this point, I darted from the laundry room to the door that led from the kitchen to the garage. I opened that door and the garage door to the outside.
We opened the door to the back of the house, hoping the night air would draw the bat out. (The next day, I read that you are supposed to do this, but you should also turn out all the lights and ceiling fans and just let the bat sense the night air. A lone bat will typically head in that direction. However… there was more to the story of this particular bat.)
I ran upstairs and found my phone while my husband kept an eye on the bat. It was around ten p.m. when I called Steve. I told him we had an emergency, and that there was a bat.
There was humor in his voice as he told me to calm down and that he was coming over.
Steve is amazing at what he does. He came armed with net and a flashlight.
Side note: You can’t just kill bats. They are more protected from killing than a human intruder on your property. Not kidding. (Not that I wanted to kill, but that’s important information.)
Unfortunately, just before Steve arrived, Mike and I watched as the bat kept trying to land on the brick of the fireplace. The brick goes all the way to the ceiling. We have crown molding around the ceiling of the downstairs, and this includes around the brick of the fireplace.
“He’s trying to disappear under that crown molding,” Mike said. “If he does, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
Sure enough, just as Steve arrived to help, the bat disappeared between the brick and crown molding.
We attempted to lure the bat out, but we were unsuccessful. We could see her in the gap, and she kept chirping at us.
I switch from calling the bat a “he” to a “she” for reasons that will become clear as we keep going.
After an hour of trying to lure the bat out, we realized things were not going our way, so someone—pretty sure it was Steve—came up with the idea to attach bird netting around the top area of the fireplace. We did this so as to keep the bat from flying around the house while we slept (and harming Jenny the blind golden). And we were hoping to eventually lure the bat out so that we could capture it and set it free outside.
Of course, I couldn’t sleep. I woke around 3 a.m. and ventured downstairs to check the status of the bat, and to make sure our tape was holding. I spotted the bat in the upper left hand corner of the brick just below the molding. This was where a larger gap existed. Of course, when I turned on the lights, the bat crawled back up beneath the molding.
The next morning, we could shine a flashlight up through the gap in the molding and see the bat attached to the brick. Upside down. Sleeping.
Look, I know there are so many people who find bats to be extraordinary cute mammals deserving of their protection. I know that bats are amazingly good for the environment and controlling the bug population, including mosquitoes.
Another side note: A single bat can eat 1,000 to 1,200 mosquitoes in a single hour.
But here’s the thing: I couldn’t have bats inside my house. Bats carry diseases like rabies. Not all bats. But rabies kills, and you should never touch a bat with your bare hands or get close enough for a bat to bite you.
So, during the day on Tuesday, we let our little lost intruder sleep. And we plotted on how we would get the bat out of the house.
And I researched…
When I began googling for information on bats, here are the types of questions that came up:
If there’s one bat in your house, are there more?
How many bats is considered an infestation?
What is the symbolism or meaning of finding a bat in your house? (Don’t click on this one!)
How do you get rid of bats?
When can you get rid of bats?
Those last two questions are very important. Remember how I said bats are protected? And remember how I said I began to switch from calling our little bat a he to a she? My google search on how and when you can “relocate bats”—that’s what they call it—will become very important as this story continues.
The following night, my husband and I made dinner. As we did this in the kitchen directly across from the living room and fireplace, we continuously glanced over at the brick. There was still daylight, so we had time.
We sat and ate our dinner with the lights out and played soft music.
As the sun began to set around 8:30, we heard the first sign of scratching noises on the out-of-sight brick. Our little intruder was waking up.
Without the lights on, the area of brick near the ceiling was turning dark. It was becoming more and more difficult to see.
But then we saw it: Our little “friend” slowly descended on the brick. A dark blob of fur appeared just beneath the white molding.
We turned off the music and remained very still and quiet while we watched. We needed the critter to crawl low enough so that we could seal off his entry point beneath the molding. We planned to do just that, then capture the little guy and relocate him to a tree outside.
That’s what we planned to do… But things didn’t go according to plan.
As the blob began to move across the brick and descend further, I nearly leapt out of my skin.
The dark shadowy blob moved, but it also stayed. One dark blob became two.
To be continued…
That is the end of Part 1 to our story of bats. Part 2 is coming next week. You are not going to want to miss how this story continues. And if you have your own bat story, be sure to leave a comment below this post. Bat stories are the best!
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