High school - my friend, who lived down the street in a typical colonial style house got a bat in it one evening. We tried to get it out, first by having someone hold open the screen door & someone else trying to direct it towards said door by imitating their best tennis serve to no avail. At some point it found an escape route…up the stairs.
We successfully got it back downstairs to start the guidance outside again & now the plan was I would stand on the stairs & make myself as big as I could; legs apart & arms up & waving to hopefully dissuade it from venturing back upstairs for a nap (or a bath).
Wrongo! It tries to go upstairs again, slipping past me & out of everyone’s sight. I turn around to look for it when one of the guys states that it’s on my back!
Knowing that a) bats don’t typically frequent the insides of houses in Greater Suburbia, & b) that they usually have good echolocation skills, & c) would stay away from things that are not only much larger than themselves but moving. I analyzed the facts & could only come up with one conclusion - it wasn’t rational because it was rabid! In a split second I calmly & rationally came up with a plan of action. Do my best impression of a 5 or 6 yo little girl screaming & freaking out while performing every dance ever…simultaneously!!!
It worked! The bat wanted no part of the CRAZEE & quickly found it’s way outside after that.
What about if one was “having been sleeping” with someone who is bat-shit crazy? Asking for a friend, of course.
Yeah, I should make clear that I was talking about lone bats where they don’t belong. I would think that if there is a bat roost in the attic with lots of bats coming and going, the risk of rabies is no greater than among the bat population in general.
But if you come home and find a lone bat hiding in your bedroom, the first thing to think is, sick bat. That could be rabies.
That makes sense. In general, wild animals that are acting in unusual ways are much more likely to be sick. I once saw a rabid raccoon, and called the animal control officer to report it. I thought it was rabid because it was attacking a blueberry bush as if the bush were an aggressive animal. And the animal control officer told me that a dead raccoon that tested positive for rabies was found near my house two days later. I’ve seen lots of raccoons, and that’s the only time i was concerned.
The bats i shared space with roosted singly or in small groups, behind hanging mirrors and such. And they acted very normally for bats, which includes avoiding people and being well oriented and having no trouble at all leaving the building shortly after awakening for the evening.
My only bat encounter was a long time ago in a bowling alley. My late husband worked there, and it was a slow time of day. Someone discovered a bat in one of the lane gutters, and everyone was terrified!
I grabbed a towel, threw it over the wee little thing, and took it outside. It flew away.
I ceded my bedroom to a bat for a couple of days to give it time to find its way out.
Without me noticing, it flew in one night when I let my dog out for a final wee before bed. As soon as I turned out the lights, though, it made its presence known.
I grabbed the doggo, tucked him under my arm and we skedaddled out of the bedroom. I tried opening the slider to the outside, but the bat had no interest in it. It kept flying up into the skylight recess, trying to find its way out. Doggo and I retreated to a guest bedroom for the night.
Did some Googling the next day and it was suggested to turn the bedroom light on in the evening, leave the slider door open and the bat would find its way out. That seemed weird to me, but… ok.
Didn’t work. The bat just kept snoozing, thinking it was still daytime. Doggo and I maintained our alternate sleeping arrangements.
Next night, I left the bedroom light off, opened the slider and sat outside with an adult beverage to watch the bat exit the room. Right on time at twilight, out came the bat. Doggo and I returned to our bedroom of choice. All’s well that ends well.
The only other bat that found its way into my house didn’t have such a happy ending. This one also got in when a door was open to bid dinner guests goodnight. It had been a long evening, so I went to bed almost immediately after the guests left.
Next morning, I grabbed what I thought was a stray piece of lettuce floating in water where I had dinner dishes soaking. It was a dead bat. Aaauuggghhhh!!! Not a pleasant sensation. Poor bat.
Right, we used to get bats in the house and they cannot be induced to fly outside in a panic. One must give them time to recover and eventually they’ll leave through an opening.
On Mackinac Island there’s a building with a small courtyard that has many shops and always theres bats about and hanging in the stairwells. Tourists sometimes get indignant about it but the locals are pretty protective of them.
I would be wary of too aggressively attempting to shoo the bat outside; it seems it would be all to easy to hurt. Never had one trapped in the bedroom, but once I found a three-quarters-dead one I had to rush to the vet’s where it received antibiotics and saline. You do what you have to do to help the animals.
I’ve never had a bat in my house, but when we get birds i usually open windows and doors and hope it leaves. Although when one perched on a potted tree i chased it some.
I used to occasionally get bats in my condo. They would roost in the chimney, and sometimes instead of going outside would come in through the fireplace. After enough complaints I eventually got the HOA to seal all of the cracks leading into the chimney.
I had the presence of mind to grab a camera during one visit.
Here is a bat with some irises.
I don’t have a la crosse stick, so I was forced to use a ski pole. The basket is a bit different. Fortunately the bat decided to rest from a lamp cord hanging from the ceiling. I poked it with the ski pole and it climbed on. I then gave it a ride outside.
The first time I dealt with an indoor bat I didn’t have Chela’s good advice about letting them recover and regain their bearings, nor did I have Qadgop’s cool proficiency with a lacrosse net. In only one way (below) did my experience resemble Qadgop’s.
One year in college I sublet a small apartment and stayed in town during the summer break. On finding the bat, I reasoned that if I left the bathroom window open and turned on all the lights except in there, the bat would seek darkness and then surely fly out the open window.
It didn’t.
It lit on the wall in the bright light and waited. And waited. I figured I had to keep it on the wing to make it want to go into the dark bathroom. I didn’t want to hurt it. How to keep it flying?
If I had a long, long stick I could poke it near the bat without touching it. I didn’t have a long, long stick.
Aha! With a squirt gun I could disturb it without hurting it. I didn’t have a squirt gun.
What I had was a plastic lemon with a sort of squirt nozzle; it had once held lemon juice. So, making the best of it, I filled and refilled the squirt lemon and soaked the walls of my dwelling in an attempt to keep the critter flying. It took many, many squirts. It also took a long time, but eventually the plan worked.
The only thing I had in common with Qadgop was how I dressed for the occasion. I found the bat when stepping out of the shower, so spent an hour chasing a bat in my birthday suit.
(Ever after I have followed the tale with my best Groucho voice, “how a bat got into my birthday suit, I’ll never know.” )
