Sisterlines Space in Time

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got." Mark Twain.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Holy cow.....er bat....Batman

Yep...we have had a couple of bats in the house. I'm blaming Jade! Every time she comes home we have another bat. I tease her that she is a vampire and she says "yeah, he's my boyfriend!". Which reminds me of this commercial for pizza! You can see it here at this post if you have not seen it before. The first one we had was just kind of hanging up on the brick chimney part of our house in the family room. Joe more or less put a big bowl over him and kind of scraped him off the wall and tossed him outside. The one from yesterday - way more exciting! I first saw him when I came out of the bathroom after having a shower in the wee hours of the morning. It's still dark out when I am doing that so I'm pretty sure the light attracted him. So he came swooping into the kitchen - I called Joe and he tried to find him, but could not. Joel hunted for him during the day yesterday but could not find him either.....but last night Jade was watching tv and then she started screaming "bat..bat".. So the boys went bat hunting again! I was already nestled in my bed with a good book so I let the chaos unfold without me...although they were loud enough I could tell what they were doing! So I thought I would look up some info on how to get bats out of the house - cause we have always heard tennis racket or something cause their echolocation will go through the holes in the tennis racket - but we don't want to kill them, we just don't want them in the house. So this is what I found out! Bats are helpful little creatures. A bat will eat her entire weight in insects each evening. (not sure why they give it a female designation there....) Bats will bite if they feel threatened. Bats pose a threat to your pets when cornered or trapped, as they do carry rabies. Cats are especially intrigued by bats and being superb hunters can pull a flying bat out of mid-air. Bat dung is highly toxic. To remove a bat safely and humanely from your home, you need to follow these steps: 1. Stay calm - Don't panic (yeah easier said then done when the thing is swooping around your head!) 2. Close all doors to corral the bat in one room and keep him from flying around the house. (okay mistake number 2...we opened everything so he would fly out!) 3. Put your pets in a different room and close the door (k...we were good here - we had control of Shadow) 4. Turn on an overhead light. This will disorient the bat for a few moments because he will think it is daytime. ( I thought they went towards the light cause that's where the bugs go when it is dark!) 5. Wait for the bat to roost. Bats roost in the daytime. He will fly to the nearest object, often a curtain. He will cling on and hang upside down quietly. (yep - they definitely hang upside down) 6. Get a hand or dish towel and rubber gloves. (hhm...not a bowl and a tennis racket??) 7. Enter the room quietly and close the door behind you..(hhm.....Jade screaming "bat...bat" and Joel hollering at her to open windows and doors......I guess that was wrong!) 8. Carefully place the towel over the bat. Wrap it around his body and pull him gently off your curtain or from where he is hanging (yeah I'm thinking I really don't want to get that close...but I think my rubber gloves will fit Joe!) 9. Talk softly to him. He is frightened and will make buzzing noises. This is his echolocation. ( HE IS FRIGHTENED?????uum..he's the one with sharp little teeth with the ability to fly while he is carrying rabies) 10. Take him outdoors, open the towel and wait for him to fly off. (personally I'm thinking a nice toss out the door would work..help him with lift off) 11. The bat will not "turn on you" or attack you in any way. He is just glad to be free. (yeah and we are just glad he is out of the house!) Don't worry, bats do not indicate that you are not clean (Thank God!) They are just looking for a safe, warm place to raise their pups. (hhm...learned something new - I never new what baby bats were called....I guess pups) oh and if you were wondering like I was...a group of bats is called a colony. Hope this little post helped either make you chuckle or give you a good visual of my crazy family trying to get the bat out of the house, or gave you some pointers for removing one from your house in the future!

yeah...so the caption under this picture from the web said "bats hibernating".......Um...if this is what they look like when they are hibernating.......YIKES.
Chow for now
Jacqui

1 Comments:

Blogger Diana Gibbs said...

Holy crap, look at those fangs man!

Love ya,
Di

P.S. I'll be sleeping at Mum's next year!

August 18, 2010 at 12:05 PM  

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