Bat
My youngest daughter came home from school recently and promptly notified that there was a creepy furry thing looking at her by the door. Somehow she made it inside without the creepy furry thing attacking her so it peeked my curiosity. I went outside and found the creepy furry thing not in the corner at the base of the door but in the corner above and to the left of the door. Turns out it was a bat.
I have seen a lot of bats over the years but this one appeared to be more wooly mammoth than bat. I have never seen quite so much fur/hair on a bat before. Do they shed or thin out their coats like other mammals do when warmer weather arrives? This was the day after an artic blizzard with 50 mph winds, rain and then snow fell on us so perhaps it got caught "out" from where it normally shelters and made do in this rather light exposed part of our covered porch.
When I found it, and photographed it, the eyes were closed and it was motionless, most likely asleep and waiting for nightfall to resume feeding on insects. I assured my daughter that it would most likely be gone by the morning. I'm not sure she entirely believes me. Although it is too early for mosquitoes, we do have Asian beetles already stirring. I found a dustpan full of them hibernating in the greenhouse underneath a partial bag of soil on the floor. I swept them up and threw them outside again, just a few days before the blizzard. Hopefully between the bat and the blizzard, they all perished. Saying that, I'm not sure bats consume Asian beetles. They do fly occasionally if disturbed, but most of the time I see them crawling around. As you can tell, I am not very learned when it comes to animal sciences.
That is a remarkably furry bat! I think you're right -- it was probably sheltering from the storm. Hopefully it can make it back to its normal roost when the weather improves.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what the deal was. It was still there a week later and when it was in the 70's again. I had never seen it move, breath or open it's eyes so I assumed it might have frozen to death there in the blizzard. So I knocked it down with a stick but it turned out to be somewhat "alive". At least it began to make sounds. It was gone the next day.
DeleteA few years ago we did a cave tour. They turned out the lights for a few second, and a but flew by. I have a bat encounter in my distant past that I have probably blogged about. The upshot was that it disappeared, but when winder came, our furnace wouldn't work because it had gotten trapped in the motor.
ReplyDeleteWe have lots of bats here. Go out any summer evening after dark and you can see them swooping through the skies eating bugs. Occasionally, we do get them infiltrating our house by finding a crack in the eaves to get into our attic and from there down into our basement through a wire chase and then into the rest of the house. I have not had much luck ushering them back out into the outside other than stunning them with a tennis racket first.
DeleteThat bat looks enormous! Maybe all the fur? I'm glad it's gone. I know bats are very useful but I don't want one hanging around close to me.
ReplyDeleteThere is something primeval inside me that dislikes them too, even if they are useful.
DeleteWe see bats flying around at dusk, but I've never seen where they sleep. Yours picked a front row seat!
ReplyDeleteI've seen them occasionally pick a light or a gutter to hole up for the daytime but I've never seen one in the same place for a week at a time. I suspect there was something wrong with it.
DeleteThat's certainly furrier than any of the bats I see around here! It's cute, though. I like bats because they eat so many insects.
ReplyDeleteThe ones I usually remove from inside the house have very short hairs. I've never seen one like this so I don't know if it was a different breed or just one doing what other mammals do and grow thicker fur in the winter months.
DeleteThat's a really furry bat! We have a bat that sleeps over our front door (hangs on to the stucco) at the desert house in the summer months from time to time. I hear they are very good to have around, so we try not to disturb him. I do worry he might fly into our house when we open the door!
ReplyDeleteI worried about that but after a couple days, it didn't bother me so much. But after 7 days without any signs of life, I became to wonder if it was even alive.
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