A bat in the bedroom

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Living where I do, I’ve been blessed/afflicted with bats on occasion for a good 6 decades. I love that they eat mosquitos, so I’ve provided them with bat houses, shoo’ed them away from places where they might get hurt by predators or fearful humans, and also had to deal with them when they’re in my house and just won’t leave.

It was that last issue that kept the Mrs. and I up this past Sunday night. We’d been out in our hot tub, outside of our master bedroom, watching the stars and listening to the roar of Lake Michigan, and soothing our aching muscles and joints after another busy day being 65 years old. We then returned to our bedroom when done soaking, turned on the lights, and something caught my eye.

That something caught my eye as it whizzed past my head. Initially I thought it was a June Bug, as we have a ton of those right now (their arrival was timely, as usual). But no, a second glance soon revealed it was a bat, and a pretty big one, circling around and around in our bedroom.

As I noted earlier this is not a new thing. A couple of years back, my wife brought a stepladder into the kitchen area from outside, which unbeknownst to her had a bat on it. It swooped past her, scratching her, before flying all over the damn room. Yes, we did subdue the bat, the Mrs. got rabies vaccine, etc.

So we took up arms again. We opened the sliding door wide, giving it an 8 foot by 4.5 foot rectangle to the outdoors to escape through. We shut other doors to minimize the bat’s other options. And we encouraged it to get the HELL out of our bedroom.

But it didn’t. So I started waving a towel, hoping to change the bat’s flight course and get it going outdoors. This did nothing besides remind me that I had previously been using that towel to dry off from hot tubbing, and that I was currently playing naked matador with a bat, which was an unsettling realization.

This too was a futile endeavor. After 10 minutes I’d worked up a sweat, but had made no other progress. So I had the Mrs. dash off to get our ultimate bat tool: My lacrosse stick. She quickly dashed outdoors to our deck, wearing her towel, and re-entered the house via the kitchen to fetch the attack stick (I feared my ‘middie’ stick would be too long and would endanger the ceiling and other fixtures).

Meanwhile, the dog was watching me from a safe corner, and the cat (which had been so helpful in locating the kitchen bat previously) just came out from under the bed, watched for about 10 seconds, then went back under the bed. Unhelpful creatures!

The Mrs. delivered the lacrosse stick, then hied out of the room, but not before giving me moral support by yelling “stick 'em, Qaddie!” (We’d gone to a LOT of lacrosse games back in the day).

And now I had my implement of choice to hand! It took a bit for me to warm up and get anywhere near my old skill level (which was nearly non-existent at best) and I did disturb some of the popcorn ceiling, which fell like snow on the carpet. But within another 5 minutes I’d snagged it out of the air, flung it to the rung, where I caged it with the lax net. I had to go to hands and knees to get it secured, which caused my back to immediately seize up, as the bat screamed at me and fluttered inside the webbing.

So I screamed back at the bat for a while, which the Mrs. interpreted as a signal to re-enter the room. She supplied me with heavy duty gloves and stiff cardboard to slide under the stick (the old cradle maneuver for keeping an object in the pocket tends to not work on a partially stunned bat). I managed to slide the cardboard under head of the stick, the Mrs. helped me up off the floor, and our visitor was flung outdoors into the night.

I do hope our visitor is ok. I don’t know why they can’t sense a wide open space with their sonar. I wish I could have given it more time to find its own way out, but the hour was late, and both the Mrs. and I did want to see a confirmed departure before going to bed in that room. I do plan to continue to be supportive of bats, but sharing indoor space with them is right out.

And once again my lacrosse stick succeeds in bat control, where in the past other implements like Tennis and badminton rackets, towels, garbage can lids have all failed.

2

At my previous residence I had bats twice. It looked just like in the movies. I stood there with a pillow and finally knocked it out of the air. I picked it up while wearing a padded oven mitt and let it outside.

3

This happened to an old girlfriend and me many years ago when I was staying the night at her place. I woke up around 1am and thought I heard a flapping sound in the bedroom. I told girlfriend, who sleepily said “it’s just something outside the window— go back to sleep”.

Which I did, and then woke up again around 3am, this time certain I heard flapping within the bedroom from one side to the next. I turned on the light and, sure enough, a bat is perched on the floor in one corner of the room.

I grab a wastebasket and quickly cover it, causing it to freak out, flapping around and squealing loudly. I was pretty freaked out, too!

I slide some cardboard under the waste basket and take the bat to the door to a little second floor balcony, happy I was able to contain the situation so quickly. Then…I see another bat perched on the frame above the door!

I manage to dislodge the perched one with a small net and a spatula. Don’t think I got back to sleep after that.

4

Nicely done. I favor a broom.

5

I guess it’s better than a rat in mi kitchen (what ahm I gonna do?).

We were staying at our friend’s cabin in the Sierra, in the upstairs loft. Middle of the night my wife shakes me awake with “Something just dropped onto my leg!” in a hushed whisper-yell. Flip on the light and see it’s a flying squirrel. No idea how it got inside but probably thru some crack somewhere. Open the back sliding door to provide egress, as the OP did. The little bugger tried several times to glide from the loft but missed and ran back up the stairs to give it another go before finally getting the idea and just run out the door and launch off the patio, no flying needed, into the inky night blackness. Out friends stayed asleep in a downstairs bedroom the whole time and hardly believed us.

But bats. Why’d it have to be bats?

6

OK, that’s funny.

7

As a young, single guy in the mid-70s, I found a little hobbit house on a lake. Very hidden, very cool; a stone cottage with slate shingles. And the owner agreed to rent the attic room to me (a cute little 8x8’ cupola).

But it was a hot summer with no A/C or screens, so I had to sleep with the windows open… and get used to bats.

I had windows on the east and west sides of the tiny room, so the breezes came in the lake side and out the garden side… and so did the bats.

At first I tried to swat them out the window, but then I thought “Hey, they’ve got echolocation, I’ll let them figure their own flight plan.”

So I slept through a lot of bat flights, and only once had to wake up to help a little lost Amelia to find the window.

8

@solost, your method is my method and has proven to work well at the office and at home. Wastebaskets and cardboard work well.

9
10

The first time the bat got into my place the cat was down the hall, and I heard a squeaking approaching. “Great” I thought, “He’s bringing me a mouse.” Then the cat came around the corner and the “mouse” was flapping it’s wings.

11

Y’all got everyone/pets checked out for rabies?

12

The pets have had their rabies shots, and neither the Mrs. nor I had evidence of significant exposure after full body exam. Had it brushed me, I’d have felt it since I was stark naked at the time, as was the Mrs.

13

Rabies in bats is relatively uncommon. Howver, rabies in bats that wind up in your house is actually common, because sick bats will seek out your warm home, and healthy bats won’t. A house actually selects for rabid bats.

14

I was told by a doctor that a bat bite can be imperceptible, thus if you know one was in the room, you need rabies shots. FWIW.

15

Yeesh. No one told me that in my case. Hopefully 30 years is past the incubation period.

16

Yes, in an article in The New Yorker, it said that several rabies victims had no knowledge whatsoever of being bitten, the bat teeth are so sharp.

17

I’ve had luck using a empty sour cream container to trap the bat against the wall, then slip a piece of cardboard behind the container (getting some resistance from the bat) then I can take the bat outside and set it free.

Brian

18

The advice to get rabies prophylaxis generally pertains to having been sleeping in a room with a bat.

“For example, if you wake up with a bat in your room, you may have been exposed to rabies and should see your doctor or call your health department, even if you don’t feel a bite. Healthcare providers will conduct a risk assessment to determine if you need rabies vaccination.”

Good to hear that the Mercotans successfully outed the bat.

19

Yes, this is the pertinent info, and the recommendation I made to my patients over the decades. Thanks for that link, @Jackmannii

post-exposure prophylaxis should be administered in the following settings:

•To all individuals who have had a bite, scratch, or mucous membrane exposure from a bat.

•When direct contact with a bat occurred and the individual is unable to rule out a bite or scratch.

•If an individual has been in a room with a bat and is unable to rule out any physical contact. Such individuals include a sleeping person who awakens to find a bat in the room, an unattended child, a mentally disabled person, and an intoxicated person. This approach is consistent with the recommendations of the ACIP for rabies post-exposure prophylaxis

●Post-exposure prophylaxis is not necessary if the person was aware of the bat at all times while in an enclosed or open space and is certain that there was no bite, scratch, or mucous membrane exposure. Household members who were not in a room with the bat do not require post-exposure prophylaxis.

The state I live in (Wisconsin) has dozens to hundreds of such bat encounters as I just had every day. It’s very rare to give rabies vaccine in such cases, and far, far rarer for a case of rabies to appear in the state. The last four cases of human rabies in Wisconsin occurred in 1959, 2000, 2004, and 2010.

I actually worked at the same place as the aunt of the girl who was the 2004 case, the girl who actually survived rabies after handling a bat. She made international news. Here’s an update on her 15 years after the fact.

20

Oh, interesting.

I vacation at a place that used to have a lot of bats (before the white nose pandemic killed most of them) and they roosted in the rec hall and many of the (unheated) cabins. We never worried about them. When they woke up in the evening, we’d watch them fly around a bit before they left the buildings to go hunting, but we never worried about whether they’d bitten us. No one got vaccinated for rabies that I’m aware of. Also, the bats weren’t stupid and didn’t directly approach the humans. At most they might nip at the edge of the cloud of mosquitos that were attracted to the humans, but that kept them safely (from their perspective) out of reach of the humans.

There were a lot that roosted in the rec hall, and it was always fun to watch them emerge, cheep in human-audible registers as they started their evening, fly around the room a few times, and then leave for their evening.

Sadly, the bats are gone. But more than 100 people slept there all summer long, for more than 100 years of high-bat-density, and i can’t recall anyone ever touching a bat, and no one caught rabies. I’ve slept many nights in a cabin that also housed a bat or three.

This has led me to believe that the fear of contact with bats is grossly excessive. But perhaps bats that get trapped inside houses are much more likely to be confused and sick than the bats i have experience with.