If you haven’t seen Noz’s account of being dive-bombed by bats, you gotta take a look. And the bat wars have continued. I’m pretty sure you have to get rabies shots in these situations, just in case you got a bite in your sleep. I remember this happening once when I was really young. My father, who didn’t play tennis, chased a bat around our house for a consider amount of time with a tennis racket. I don’t remember how that turned out. Any thing like this ever happen to you?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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In college we participated in a yearly Open House with presentations of experiments dealing with engineering. Besides that we were rather succesfull over 3 years, it was great fun. To illustrate the world of ultrasound, we used a transducer to record sound above normal hearing range. With an electronics circuit this “above” sound was transformed to the human hearing frequency. At college there were some experiments with various sounds of birds, we chose a bat used by the Medical School for our ultrasound experiment. As visitors entered the room, we took the bat out of the refrigerator (state of sleep) and we listened with awe to the sound of its radar signal. Other sounds in the room like a sqeaking hinge of the door, was audible with a volume as if it was a medieval church door. On day’s end, we got a prize, but for unknown reason the bat had passed away. I felt pretty bad about that.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Maybe they are not meant to be refrigerated?
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After staying overnight in the room with the temperature control set at 5°C., all specimens appeared to be dormant except for P. subflavus and E. fuscus, of which species single bats were occasionally found to arouse spontaneously and re-enter the dormant state even when undisturbed.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."thanks for the link!
yeah, we were told to get a rabies shot: five injections for me, four for mrs. noz. we got three more scheduled over the next two weeks. the two shots in my ass, one in each cheek, were my absolute favorite.
I had them when the pit bull savagely hospitalized me and Boo.
It was such a drag having to go back over and over again for those painful shots. I had shots right into my wounds.
Nothing but good experiences with bats here in the New York Appalachians. They eat up the freakin’ gnats & mosquitos that make our warm weather hellish.
The bats are in trouble now, though, due to habitat loss & disease. Same with many bird species.
I once had a bat in my room. It was much like Noz described. I woke up to a loud swooshing sound above my head and thought, “Wow, that must be one huge moth”. I got out of bed, turned on the light, only to find a bad circling my room. This was an old farm house turned into a dormitory. I ran out of the room and woke up some friends. One of grabbed a big bucket and started chasing the bat around the house in the bizarre hopes of catching it. The bat flew into a closet and disappeared. It was bloody unnerving to say the least.
I was awakened one night by my cat bouncing around the bedroom. Upon opening my eyes I saw in the dim light a HUGE flying thing.
I followed the cat who followed the bat. I grabbed a towel, thinking to throw it over the bat. I would follow the cat and the bat until the bat came near me, then I would run the other way. I did this a few times till I realized I was not going to throw the towel over the bat.
I scooped up the cat, ran to the bedroom with it, then shut the door.
The next day I noticed the cat sitting for hours in front of a bookcase. I got the wet-dry vacuum and vacuumed around the books till I heard the vacuum gulp.
I put the canister outside and took off the lid. It was hard to believe such a tiny thing could make such a big shadow.
Later in the day when I checked the canister, the bat was gone.
Oh, and the tarp covering the wall that had been removed got about a thousand more staples around the edges.
When the weather gets hot I open windows and invariably a bat flies in through the one window that doesn’t have a screen. I guess I’ve trained them cause they swoop around the room a couple of times then turn and fly back out again but it’s pretty unnerving. Satchmo always sleeps through the whole thing.
you know what Newfs don’t like? Live lobsters in the refrigerator. Offends their sensibilities.
Back when I was doing remodeling work, occasionally I’d encounter sleeping bats in the attics of old houses. A gentle brush with a gloved hand would get them into the bat transport bucket for the trip home, where they were released to do what wilderness wench mentioned above. I always liked having them around, knowing they would eat lots of mosquitoes. We never had one get into the house.
l used to get bats in the house a couple times a year because l didn’t have screens on a pair of french doors in the bedroom. l’d wake up with one hanging from the ceiling in the morning….didn’t go over real well w/ my lady. l’d just leave the door open, and they’d leave when it got dark. there’s a screen now, so the only time l see them is outside.
l’ve had birds in the house too…worst was a big raven, he was a challenge.
but the worst is squirrels. you don’t know what mayhem is until some stupid squirrel wanders in from the courtyard…no screen on that pair of doors…and it’s being chased around the house by you and a 65 lb dog… on wood floors no less…total insanity.
LOL on the raven. One must have flown in here through an open third floor window years ago.
I’m glad I wasn’t home to pretend I was in The Birds.
I came home to see bird shit everywhere and couldn’t figure out what happened.
A few days later I was sitting at my desk and stretched out my legs. My bare foot touched something hard and fuzzy. Yep. Bird must have died of shock.
Feel fortunate that there still are bats; we haven’t seen any lately. Our story with bats starts with renting an older house when we were first married and having a bat get into the living area. A friend came with a heavy pair of work gloves and picked up the bat from behind a curtain and took it outside and released it. Bats are good; they eat their weight in mosquitoes every day, some have said. A few years later we move into a really old house built in 1730 in CT. We moved in during February and stored some stuff in the attic, a nice walk up attic. We had two young children with us by then. One night a bat appears in the kids bedroom as we are putting them to bed. I immediately think of our previous time with bats and run out of the room slamming the door and hustling downstairs to find some heavy gloves. Of course my wife was left with the two small kids and the bat and was not pleased with my immediate departure. I quickly returned with my gloves on and a tiny cage that I had found in an old work room. She and the kids were hiding under the covers and the bat was found at the top of one of the curtains. By the time I got the bat outside it had almost squeezed out of small bird cage. Soon it was gone. However, when I discovered that the source of the bat was the attic I had to take a look. Well, we sneaked in one hot summer day and a whole wall was moving bats! We were caretaker renters in one the original Gallup houses in CT and idea from the original owners to keep out other more destructive creatures was to have bats in the attic and snakes in the basement. The current owner and landlord, a descendant of the Gallups, had tried everything imaginable to rid the place of bats. The bats returned every year finding knotholes or cracks somewhere in order to get back into their attic. We adjusted and stayed in that wonderful old place with the bats until we bought a house and moved on. But I’ve got a huge respect for the bats. In a house that we later built the bats moved in almost as soon as it was finished. I know because I had saved money doing all of the painting. As I painted that new house bats would be coming out of the eaves at different times and places. I never fell from the ladder but it does give one a bit of a jolt having bats suddenly flying out from the eaves. Anyway, our bats have disappeared because of having a serious disease and we really miss them. The mosquitoes are attacking like they never have before.
Yep. Opened a window, threw my book at the bat and both were outside on the ground in the snow. The bat recovered and flew off.
The mouse that the cat brought in wasn’t as lucky. He wasn’t dead when the cat dropped my present at my feet.
Me, the cat and the dog chased him around. I got him with the broom. Yuck.