Bat in Belfry

Posted on July 21, 2003 in Cats Creatures Daily Life

“I” said the little leatherwing bat
“I’ll tell to you the reason that
The reason that I fly by night
Is because I’ve lost my heart’s delight.”

Boadicea and Fiona thought it the best toy they’d ever found in the house. Lynn nearly walked into it, a three inch long fur blimp with eight inch wings. She called me into the front room and I helped her herd the kittens into the office. Virginia was sleeping in the bedroom closet. We put her in there, too.

The little varmint flew up in the loft and hung in the skylight. I left a message with Animal Control. Just as the officer returned my call, our visitor walked out of the skylight and made his way along the ceiling, clinging to the rough surface with his elbow claws and feet. Then he dove and roosted on our microwave oven.

Lynn wrapped herself up in a sheet and gave me a towel to cover my head. “You know those wings are really gigantic hands,” I said to Lynn. Every few minutes, the bat dropped from his roost to fly around the living room. We hit the floor, crawled under the table to avoid colliding with the flying short-snouted shrew. Boadicea and Fiona cried pitifully from behind the office door. They wanted to join us in the fun.

The officer, whose name was Barbara, came all the way from the county seat, Santa Ana, about 45 minutes away. She brought a butterfly net, a metal claw, and a snake stick. I told her that my wife was performing a Virgin Mary act inside. “Actually that’s not a bad idea,” she said.

Once inside, she had us stand in the hall. She caught it almost immediately. Then it struggled free of the net and flew about some more. It soared back into the loft where she cornered it and packed it in a large coffee can. Then she came down, checked the rabies vaccinations on all our cats, and gave us a number to call for more information.

“They’re like flying monkies,” she said, as our two little ones sniffed around the coffee can. The bat had to go to the county seat for rabies testing. “They are high risk,” she explained. “He looks pretty healthy to me, but if there’s a problem, we’ll come knocking at your door.” Otherwise we’ll get a card in the mail telling us that everything is fine.

I disinfected the microwave and the cabinet doors after she left. Then I closed the chimney flue and wired the fireplace mesh shut — this appeared to be the point of entry. I took the old sponge out to the garbage can just as Officer Barbara was driving away, taking our visitor back to Santa Ana, where they would add to the world knowledge base about bats and rabies.

We know that bats can carry rabies, but no one knows for certain how they contract it. As an aerosol perhaps?

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More information on California Bats

• List of California Bat Species
• Bat Conservation International
• Bats of San Diego County
• Western Ecological Research Center – Bats
• Southern California Bats
• Bats4Kids
• California Bat Conservation Fund