Imagine yourself at 2 in the morning being awoken from a sound sleep by what seems to be a very loud and obnoxious cricket with a squeak coming from directly next to your bed. Well that is exactly what I thought was happening at 2am this morning but as I was coming to I started to realize that this sound was to loud and the squeak just didn't fit into my "cricket" theory. "Oh God!" was my only thought as I crawled to the end of the bed looking to see if my hunter (Willow) had cornered some poor mouse with a cold and brought it to me as a present. To say I was shocked to see a bat lying at his feet would be putting it mildly. There it was staring off into space clicking (the sound I was having trouble identifying) madly too scared or hurt (I couldn't tell which) to fly while Willow just looked at me like "Mom, look at this thing!" I took stock, exited the bed (because now it was safe to touch the floor, no mouse!) and shooed a very proud kitty out the door before proceeding down to the mudroom to get Raine's trusty (used in ever animal emergency in the house) green butterfly net. Raine hearing my mad dash down the stairs and the few curses that followed the original discovery was now fully awake and following me back into my bedroom to see what all the commotion was about. The look on her face when she realized that it was a bat, especially since just a few short hours before we had been sitting out on the lawn at dusk watching these very cool creatures fly out of the barn and swoop down near our heads to check us out was priceless. Anyway long story short Raine and I in our nightgowns and crocs holding a bat in a butterfly net took our midnight visitor outside after determining that there was no visible reason why he couldn't fly and tried to set him free.
Now I ask you, Have you ever tried to get tiny little bat feet untangled from a butterfly net without actually touching it? Let me tell you it is not possible so I sent Raine back in for my trusty utility gloves. After spending some time trying to get him to fly away and failing miserably we decided instead to attach him to the side of our barn thinking that when he came back to his senses he could simply fly up into his home. This method worked a lot better and we were finally able to feel good our rescue and go back to bed with a promise to check on our friend in the morning.
Update: He was still hanging on when we left for work but when we got home that afternoon it looked as though he had flown back up into his house. So once again
The animal protctor and I had saved the day!!!
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