Early this morning I was awoken by a phone call from a couple who had woken to find a bat in their home. They opened several windows to allow the bat space to escape but the bat, afraid and traumatized by repeated attempts by the family cat to capture it, wasn’t flying out of the open windows. Instead, it made several attempts to land in a corner of the room where the surface proved too smooth for its small toes to grasp. It then made several failed attempts to escape via the windows but only managed to become lost in the Roman blinds. As nothing else was working, the couple ended up using a net to capture the bat. That is where the real trouble began.
Bats and nets don’t mix well. Sure, scientists use specialized nets to capture bats for study all over the world but, they are all monitoring the nets constantly and are trained to quickly free the bats once they are caught.
Why won’t this work just as well for Joe Homeowner?
- First, a bat left in a net will pull and struggle with its wings and claws in an effort to free itself – most times this effort just results in the bat becoming more entangled than when it was first caught.
- Second, scientists are trained so that they can hold a netted bat with a gloved hand while using a bare hand to carefully untangled the bat. I feel a need for caps here : NO ONE SHOULD EVER APPROACH OR TRY TO HELP A BAT WITHOUT TRAINING AND WITHOUT LEATHER GLOVES ON. A terrified and trapped bat only has one defense left – biting. I was careless and new to dealing with bats caught in nets on my first bat trip and, even with training, got myself bitten. My reward? An extra round of rabies shots (the bat was not tested, thus the shots were a necessary precaution).
So what do you do? Be patient. If you can confine a bat to a single room and it doesn’t escape through an open window it will eventually land somewhere. Once it lands break out the coffee can and cardboard (and don’t forget the leather gloves!) and gently take the bat outside your home and release it at the base of a tree where it will be able to climb up to a proper height to then fly back to its roost.
Don’t have a spare can? Then grab a hand towel or something larger – still, of course, wearing gloves – and very carefully remove the bat and take it outside.
Bats’ wings are supported by very long, thin, and delicate bones. Great care should always be taken to protect both you (leather gloves) and the bat when removing it from your house.
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