Saturday, July 03, 2010

Bats in the belfry

I was awakened this morning around one-thirty. I heard faint muffled noises. It was as if someone was walking up the stairs very, very slowly. The stairs are lined with cardboard right now to protect them until they're finished. At first I thought it was Callie trying to come up. Then I thought it was Ken. But why take one step every ten seconds? And he was in bed, anyway.

Light patterns on the ceiling of a cave gallery at the Monmousseau winery.

I got up and checked the stairwell. Empty. I went downstairs to find Callie sleeping. I even ventured down to see if Bertie was in the garage; he was still out gallivanting (I'll have to speak to him about that). I went back to bed convinced that I was hearing things. I was almost asleep when I heard the noise again. I got up to look, but it stopped, so I went back toward the bed. Then I felt a little breeze as something flew past my head. That's a pretty fast moth, I thought. I turned the light on and there it was. A bat was in the room.

It flew around the room and landed on a beam. Then it took off and did the same again. The noise I was hearing was the bat landing on the beam and repositioning itself for takeoff. By this time Ken was awake and was opening the windows wide as I was trying to guide the bat toward them. I started swinging a tee-shirt around to help move the bat in the right direction.

Then I hit him. Plop. He hit the floor. I scooped him up with the tee-shirt and tossed him out the window. But he didn't fly. Splat. I had visions of his vampire cousins coming for me in the night. But I managed to fall asleep and nearly forgot about him.

We found him dead on the balcony below the window this morning. Out of respect, I didn't take any photos before I disposed of the body. Poor little guy.

9 comments:

  1. Scary!
    Next time, you should hang him in high position so he can fly again :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh the poor thing....but that would have really freaked me out.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Having a bat in the house...I would have been screaming bloody murder.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We had a bat in the house when it was very new; it had come in through the steel chimney pipe for the wood stove that had yet to be hooked up. Opening the big windows didn't help. The cat was in ecstasy leaping in the air every time it swooped low, and then it went high and flew oval loops through the trusses of the great room ceiling.

    A Chinese pagoda-shaped bird cage sat on one of the beams and at last the tired bat lit on it and hunkered down. I got a ladder, Fritz gently went up, carried birdcage and bat down and put it out through one window. We cranked them all closed and went back to bed.

    The cat was pissed!

    ReplyDelete
  5. We had two bats in our house this spring on separate occasions that we think came down the chimney on the rare evening I did not have a fire going.

    They were flying around the first floor in the kitchen, living room etc while my teenager is calmly texting all her friends, my nine year old just pulls up a stool to watch me freak out and the two dogs just sit there like they are watching a tennis match back and forth. (no help whatsoever from them).

    Just little brown bats but I don't want them IN my house. I opened the door and out they flew. Turns out they also live in our attic. They are an
    endangered species in Connecticut it turns out...(figures).

    We installed wire mesh in every little crack in the attic. I want to put a bat house in the back yard to give the bats the right idea; Bats outside-People inside. :0

    ReplyDelete
  6. See those are the good video moments lol. Rest in peace little guy.

    ReplyDelete
  7. What the heck was in that T-shirt?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think the bat is a marvelous critter. having bats around is a good thing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. vtt, I think he must have hit his head on the floor... no more flying.

    lynn, it's not what I wanted to be doing at 1:30am.

    rick, it's not the first time...

    will, poor cat! Good story, though.

    suzanne, screens were the first thing I thought of, but I probably won't do it. Too much trouble for a once-a-summer event. :)

    tornwordo, ah! I should have thought of that!

    starman, well, for a few seconds, a bat.

    michael, I love to watch them at dusk swooping around the house (outside) catching insects. Great fun on a summer evening!

    ReplyDelete

Tell me what you think!