Bobbi, Rescuer Of Bats -- Yet Again

      It keeps happening to her even after professional bat abatement: our neighbor, the same woman who is fostering the kittens, texted me about eight this morning:  "There's another bat in my house.  Can you come over?"

      I was sleeping in fairly aggressively this morning, but eight was plenty late enough.  I texted back that I'd be there in a few minutes, threw on clothes, found work gloves and a little cardboard box, and walked over.

      She led me in through her kitchen.  "I think it's still on the pie safe in the dining room.  Yes, see it there?"

      I couldn't find the bat, and said so.

      She pointed. "It's at the screen, see?"

      I finally saw it, a huddled shape no larger than a fat mouse.  She had a window screen leaning against the pie safe.  A careful housekeeper with a half-dozen housecats, she does a lot of window cleaning: noseprints add up.  The bat had apparently made its way up the screen and was clinging onto the front of the pie safe.  A furry, reddish-brown body and black wings helped it blend in with the dark wood.

      It was probably an Indiana Brown Bat.  They're an endangered species and this was an annoyed example.  When I put the open end of the box against the front of the pie safe and slid it up from below it, the bat raised its head and set up a chittering that probably should have made my ears burn.  But it let go and dropped into the box; I folded two of the flaps shut and my neighbor and I headed outdoors.

      She's got an open shed extension on one side of her garage.  The roof is almost flat and fairly low.  I set the box on it, standing one end.  When I opened the flaps, sunlight streamed into the box.  The bat did not like this, not one little bit.  It chewed me out again and showed its fangs.  They have an impressive set of teeth and they can open their mouths wide (handy for scooping up dinner on the wing!).  But they're small; it might've been able to get a fingertip but I didn't care to find out.  I turned the box so the inside was shadowed and left the bat to contemplate.  It was scratching behind an ear with one leg while hanging from the other as I stepped away, a pretty impressive feat.

      The neighbor and I chatted awhile, and then I saw motion on the rooftop.  "Oh, look!"

      She turned and and we both watched the bat crawl to the edge of the roof, hop off and spread its wings like a base-jumper hitting the silk.  Unlike a parachutist, the bat gave a couple of flaps as soon as it caught air, picked up altitude and wheeled away between the neighbor's house and mine.  It circled my house and then hers, then took off toward the nearest row of trees, bobbing and weaving as only bats can.

      My neighbor still doesn't know how the bats get in.  Her house is supposed to be bat-proof!  Perhaps it sneaked down the chimney to her fireplace; I don't think she has an anti-bat screen on the chimney-top.