Saturday, August 2, 2008

There's bats in the belfry, Part Duex

Perhaps you will recall this post. Well, it happened again.

Not in quite the same way. This time, it was Emily that discovered the creature. Stepped on it, actually. She entered her room in the dark and thought it was just a leaf on the floor. Apparently, it seems perfectly normal to have leaves on her bedroom floor and to step on them.

The thing looked like it had already gotten some attention from the cat and was none too happy. Diane, who speculated that it came in with me at 2:00am after my Thursday night work shift was over, put it in the carport in a box. No, I don't usually bring bats back from the desert, I think they find themselves roosting over our door from time to time. Roosting, is that the proper term, or would it be nesting or shacking up? No, shacking up is something else entirely.

This morning, it looked alive, if not well. So, Diane called the Desert Museum who referred her to some other lady who referred her to Glenda who told her to take it to the Valley Animal Hospital.

Oh, the Valley Animal Hospital is the same place where my buddy's wife took his sick rabbit and a nearby fire led the rabbit to die from smoke inhalation. This led to the first time I have ever heard of a funeral and burial service for a rabbit, complete with a minister that made all the attendees ring a bell at the graveside. But that, I suppose, is another story.

So, now we know what to do with the bats, and are relieved to discover our cat has it's rabies shots up to date and that no one had the thing land on them, which would have been the worst fate of all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

just know that if the bat would have died, i would have attended funeral services.

Nichole said...

Why do you have to take the bat in somewhere? Cant you just set it free? And did Emily have shoes on when she stepped on it or did she feel the thing on her barefoot? I have never heard of anyone having a bat in their house.

Anonymous said...

Clearly, you did not read part one, or you would have heard of such a thing!

Emily was barefoot...eeewwww...

I put it in an open box in the carport and it did not fly away. I think it was injured too much. From the squashing or the cat I cannot say.

Two reasons for finding someone to take it: 1) it was still alive and I felt sorry for it. I have no idea how you go about nursing a bat back to health; 2) I spent much of my time trying to fall asleep that night wondering if our wonderful cat had contracted some sort of disease from it.

Being a bat and a (possible) carrier of rabies they will test it for rabies if it dies. Then they will tell us. If it lives they will release it in this same general area where we live.

The last one we had in the house just flew away after it got over its fright!

You know how our door is in a little alcove? I think these young ones find it a good place to rest. Then they get startled when the front door is opened and unfortunately fly into our house instead of away from our house.

It is exciting though!