Bat 'er UP

Last night, while sitting here watching a little History Channel after a long day at work, the cats became very frantic. Normally, around 8:00 PM or so they get frisky and chase each other, but this was different. They were running around like crazy, leaping over the furniture, looking up in the air.

I watched them for a little while and didn't really notice in the dimming light of the living room that what they were really doing was chasing a seemingly annual visitor ... an Eptesicus fuscus ... more commonly known as a Big Brown Bat. The bat was obviously having a good time flitting about, and seemed to be deliberately taunting them from about 15 feet up, safely out of reach.

Many of you know this isn't the first time we've had such a visitor. After all, living in a city-block sized renovated mill built in the early 1900's affords the brown bat a pretty good chance of finding safe haven. And, the brown bat is known to be able to get through a hole the size of a quarter - even smaller sometimes, if the bat is small. With our place having a large (10 ft high x 20 ft long) skylight, they obviously have possible entry points there.

Once they get in, it is sometimes difficult to catch them, since with the brick interior walls and all the exposed beams, they have a lot of choices of perching (hanging) places. This one, not being as dull-witted as some I have had, was smart enough to "go high" for lack of a better term. Part of the time he spent at the very peaks of the skylight, about 30 ft above the living room floor. The rest of the time he spent way up near the ceiling, hanging on the brick walls, like this little fellow (perhaps a "Big Brown" pup, or a Myotis lucifugus "Little Brown Bat") shown at right from last year.

So this year's bat (the first so far this year, I should say) eluded my tried and true Rube Goldbergian, but effective, bat-catching system (which consists of a wire mesh colander wire-tied to the end of a shower curtain tension rod I bought just for this purpose last year).

Alas, I resigned myself to calling building maintenance. After the woman at the answering service recovered from her repeating at least three times, "You mean a bat ... like the bird?" and my repeating "Errr ... yes, only it is actually a mammal technically, but also the only 'true' flying mammal" a couple of times, she dispatched the call to one of the maintenance men. This guy came prepared. He was equipped with a pool cleaner pole with the leaf netting that one uses to snare leaves from the deep end of an inground pool. However ... he seemed a little timid. So I used the pool cleaner netting to snag the now-frightened bat in the net ... but he escaped. Several tries later, as Jake and Elwood looked on almost misty-eyed at their fun being over, we ended up netting the bat and releasing him through our dining room window out into the night to search for more mosquitoes. Or ... a different unit to get into.

Now, not to belabor this story, but two things are funny about it:

1. The "boys" are still walking around and looking up into the air for their "flying toy"; and
2. If you look at date on the two bat pictures above, I wonder if it is the same bat from a year ago today!