Going batty!

I’ve just had to catch a bat that was flying around my living room. It was all a bit weird to start with, because you know that feeling when you think there’s something behind you, but you know that you’re all alone? Or should be!

But then I heard a sound and saw the ruddy thing swooping backwards and forwards across my mezzanine landing and in between times flying to-and-fro across my living room. The next thing it collided with a wall and flopped onto the floor in a bedroom doorway where it floundered a bit, because bats, of course, don’t have proper legs. I had nothing else to hand, so chucked my handkerchief over it and that made it start hissing and spitting like a cat and chomping its tiny teeth together non-stop, making a ‘tick tick tick’ sound like a fast-running kitchen timer.

Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided that I’d better go off to find something more substantial in which I could pick it up and was on my way back with an old duster when unfortunately it managed to escape and once more took to flight. But this time it wasn’t so lucky, and before I could make any attempt to catch it, it collided with the wall and fell down behind a pile of packing cases that I still have stacked up on my landing.

I didn’t know where it was but could still hear it ticking away, so concluded that it must be trapped. This presented me with a bit of a dilemma. If I just left it, it might die where it was, which would really not be the best outcome for either of us. It might also manage to escape, and then might find its way into my bedroom and the next thing be swooping around my head in the middle of the night. So I had no option, really, but to find it, trap it and release it outside.

That meant moving all the boxes until I found it and sure it enough, it was trapped between the rear-most box and the wall. Now I could take a closer look at it and I can tell you that those teeth of his may have been small, but they were pointy and very sharp looking. So having decided that my old duster left a bit to be desired, I went off and got a thicker towel from the kitchen.

As soon as I began to prise him out of the gap that he’d fallen into, the hissing, ticking and struggling got even worse. But man will invariably overcome bat, and so it was in this instance. I wrapped him in the towel and took the whole struggling mass outside where I could release him onto an outdoor table. He promptly flopped off onto the ground, which I guess is a bit of an alien environment for a bat. Nevertheless he managed to find his way by crawling, flapping his wings and flopping to the wall of my house, which he promptly began to climb up.

And this was no tiny pipistrel, I can tell you. This was a full-size adult bat with a wingspan of the best part of a foot, not some little tiddler! Then with no further ado, he let go of the wall, flapped his wings and flew off towards the light of the moon which was rising over the trees. I have no idea where he came from or how he got into my house, but other people have said the same when I checked on the internet. I just hope that he’s the first and last one that does, though.