rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
When I woke up this morning, there was some noise and confusion in the dining room, which turned out to be two bats, flying around!

I have no idea how they got in. I also don't know how successful I was at getting them back outside. I managed to get one out onto the front porch, but it eventually stopped flying around and found a really good hiding place for itself among the thousands of cardboard boxes piled up. The other one might have similarly found a hiding spot in the front hall closet.

I don't know for sure because I was feeling the time crunch of trying to get out the door for rowing practice. I'm not sure how useful it would have been to try tearing the entire house apart to get at the bats. It seemed better to just leave them be, especially because as best I understand it, humans should generally avoid handling bats directly.

Have you ever had bats in your house? What did you do?

Date: 2022-06-16 02:29 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] rainswolf
I've had two (at different times).

I opened windows and they flew out within about 20 minutes. I figured it was like bats in a cave would be able to find the way out of the cave via echolocation, and in both cases they did.... In one case I kept the bedroom light on and figured it would want to find its way out to darkness and in the other case it was in the hallway and I just opened all the hall windows.

Date: 2022-06-16 05:14 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
You can't shove up or remove the screens?

Date: 2022-06-16 02:32 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] sytharin
One time we had a bat somehow wedged inside the box fan we kept in the window during the summer in Wisconsin. We had to open the fan up to get it out. To this day I have no idea how it got in -- it seemed physically too large to possibly fit through the slats.

We did everything with thick leather gloves on and definitely didn't touch the bat.

We also had a bat in a cabin we stayed in last summer. Much less unexpected but still unsettling. We think eventually we got it to fly out the door, but in the dark we were seeing all kinds of strange shadows and couldn't be sure.

If not for rabies, bats in the house would be kind of cute. But they probably don't like it either.

Date: 2022-06-16 02:54 pm (UTC)
larryhammer: canyon landscape with saguaro and mesquite trees (cactus)
From: [personal profile] larryhammer
In? No, but a couple bats do roost in a crack between the carport roof and the house wall during the summer. I've only glimpsed them a couple times, flitting in or out, over the years but we knew they're still there by the guano underneath. By the size and seasonality, I think pipistrelles, but given I've never gotten a great look, that's a guess -- and there's a lot of species of little bats around here.

Date: 2022-06-16 03:26 pm (UTC)
graydon: (Default)
From: [personal profile] graydon

Had bats in this house twice; the first time was a pair of confused Big Brown Bats (Big only relative to the Little Brown Bat) that flew at my face when I opened the shower curtain. I was able to open the upstairs door to nowhere and shoo them out it without incident.

Second time was a bat roosting in the looped up electrical cord of the vacuum cleaner; I initially thought it was a cat toy and dropped it when it wiggled. It got put outside with precautions but I noticed an hour later that I had a skin break on that hand with no other explanation and the area around the skin break was becoming inflamed. A trip to emergency for rabies shots followed. (There are four, then three boosters at intervals.)

My landlord had a guy in to fix the roof quite promptly.

Date: 2022-06-16 05:47 pm (UTC)
graydon: (Default)
From: [personal profile] graydon

While I should never want to suggest not taking rabies precautions, these days, one might also observe that bats have all manner of remarkable diseases.

Being Patient Zero is always best avoided!

Date: 2022-06-16 05:28 pm (UTC)
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
From: [personal profile] twoeleven
You have the oddest problems. :)

I can't offer any advice; all of the bats near me stay safely outside.

Date: 2022-06-16 09:34 pm (UTC)
bluepapercup: (Default)
From: [personal profile] bluepapercup
We had bats in the house a number of times growing up. They’d come in through a hole in the attic we didn’t know about.

The general procedure was to open all the doors of the house and use a broom to herd the bat out.

Good luck!

Date: 2022-06-16 09:46 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] annikusrex
eep!

Date: 2022-06-17 01:26 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] shalpacafarm
So, if you were asleep, in your house, with bats, you need to call the health department for guidance.

Date: 2022-06-18 12:57 pm (UTC)
scrottie: (Default)
From: [personal profile] scrottie
Yes, by some coincidence, I had bats too!

The saga continued. The next evening, a bat was doing a few laps of one room then going to the next and doing a few laps. I wonder if the door to outside just leading to darkness made it less visible to little batty but the ability to navigate from room to room vs outside were in stark contrast. Trying to usher them gently outside (my theory was too much excitement would make them fly fast and stick to the most obvious route in panic), they found the library-office, which, tbh, is perfect bat roost, if only they could easily get in and out, where little batty hid behind a row of books on a top shelf of the built-in bookshelf. This bookshelf really should be full of crystal skulls, 17th century manuscript reprints, etc instead of crap tech books. I delicately removed books a few at a time, met with angry chittering (R's word), until there was left just an angry, tired, probably hungry, very tiny lump of bat. Every few books removed was a new burst of invective in bat. We gently slid a box over them and a bit of coroplast or something over that, not without more angry bat noises, took them outside, took off the lid, tilted the box slowly toward level, and they blasted out in the jaunty irregular path bats take. Hope they found lots of tasty bugs that night.

I know human dwellings are terrible for bats, with too confined spaces and no food, but having a bat in the library briefly was super cool. Anyway, there's now some polyurethane foam in the gaps around the bathroom light fixture, my best guess for egress.

Date: 2022-06-18 06:15 pm (UTC)
ivy: Two strands of ivy against a red wall (Default)
From: [personal profile] ivy
We had one, we opened all the windows and shooed it out with a broom.

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