Woke up this morning and saw a brown spot on the wall in the living room, and went to investigate, and lo and behold there is a bat in the house. I have now spent two and a half hours trying to sheperd the bat outside, with no luck.
It is now starting to look like I may have a roommate. Tunch, perceptive as always, still has not seen the bat.
*** Update ***
I am now bat free. Which is good, because I was beginning to look crazy running around my apartment with my door and windows open wielding a broom, a bucket, and a beach towel.
4tehlulz
bat vs. cat oh shi-
p.a.
Careful… there is rabies potential. Found a dead bat on my front walk last week, called dept. of health. They said dispose of it without touching it, wash well after. Don’t know if a live bat will display signs of disease or not.
Notorious P.A.T.
Supposedly, a bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes a night. I would let him stay a while.
I always figured when I get around to buying a house, I will put a bat house in my yard. Kind of like a bird house, but for bats:
http://www.batconservation.org/content/Bathouseimportance.html
Halteclere
I had a flying squirrel in the house once. It occured right before Christmas, and this squirrel would, when chased out of the Christmas tree glide over to the drapes. Then when it was chased out of the drapes it would glide back to the tree, over and over again. We finally caught it underneath a big bowl and ushered it outside.
That and I once found a 3′ black snake in the house. It was crawling across a tread I was about to step on while going up the stairs early one dim morning. My first, groggy thought was “I don’t remember the grain of the wood going like that…”.
jon
Don’t try to shepherd a bat out of the house. Chances are it could be rabid, so don’t touch the thing, either. What you want to do is get some Tupperware and a baking tray or (Duh!) the Tupperwear lid, capture the thing, and put it outside where the bat can climb up a wall and go to an overhang/eave/not sunny place and sleep for the day. Chances are it’ll be gone soon enough.
Then you get to figure out how it got inside. Check the cooler vents, heating vents, windows, whatnot. It could have flown in, but it might be part of a little colony of bats that found a home inside yours. Again, it might have rabid members and be most unwelcome. But it might go flying off every evening and rid yours and neighbors’ yards of flying pests like mosquitos, flies, and moths. So don’t immediately go into MUST KILL mode.
Plus, if you kill them all, your secret cave with the computer, your funny nippled suit, and the big car won’t have the right ambiance.
John Cole
I am not going to kill the damned thing, and I am not worried about rabies, I just want it out of my house.
Halteclere
I’ve thought about doing the same thing. Only problem is that my current place doesn’t have a good site for the house (the house needs to be on the southeast side, high up and in a protected area if I remember correctly).
Mary
This post is useless without video.
(Seriously, be careful getting rid of the bat. Tunch has his shots, you don’t.)
jon
Perdone el commente doble, por favor.
rkrider
had one in the living room once, used a fishing net to catch him…..good luck
Jeffrey
“Yes, Father. I shall become a bat.”
Andrew
I am reminded of The Office…
mrmobi
Except for the advice to keep the bat in the house, all the suggestions here are good, especially this one:
A few years back, we added a second floor to our bungalow. One of the things that was done was removing the old, brick chimney and replacing it with an enclosed structure which ended in a galvanized chimney top.
The next fall, late in the season, we discovered that there were three sparrows flying around in our basement.
Long story short, the new galvanized chimney top had a place where birds could perch, they were overcome by the fumes and fell into the chimney. The three lucky ones were allowed to fly free, but we found one dead inside our furnace, along with a shitload of nesting material.
You need to find out how the bat got in, or this will happen again.
b. hussein canuckistani
A friend’s GP insisted she get rabies shots after finding a bat living in her apartment. Apparently the bites can be subtle and hard to spot. Check with your doctor before you dismiss the notion of rabies.
On a lighter note, are you feeling a compulsion to fight crime?
RSA
We used to have bats in our back yard; they’d swoop down over the pool at dusk, presumably catching and eating bugs. I put up a bat house, but they seemed to have a “There goes the neighborhood” reaction and I haven’t seen them for a couple of years now.
Whenever I’ve had to catch some critter in our house (bird, lizard, or small snake–we have a cat who brings in “friends” occasionally) a blanket or large towel has been the best tool for the job.
Paddy
John- I get them 3-4 times a summer. My technique (other than screaming for Jeff)
Open as many windows in the vicinity of the bat- wide open,curtains pulled back.
Bucket in one hand, broom in the other, try nudging him towards the windows with the broom. The bucket is for if he happens to land someplace that you can put it over him and use the broom to cover the bucket and toss him out. Also, if you can close off the room he is in so he can’t go flying thru the house it helps (from experiance on that one).
Good luck!!!
P
Thelonius
How did we ever live without The Google? I love the exclusion for Michigan in the first result.
I hope you have
WayneCole Manor back down to its one batty resident soon.nightjar
A few years ago a Texas boy woke up to find a bat in his bedroom. He had no awareness of having been bitten, probably while asleep. He died of rabies a month or so later.
When I was a kid, the area where I grew up had a serious epidemic of rabies and I witnessed several dogs in full rabies rage. I still have nightmares about that.
Genine
Except for the one in your belfry.
Krista
Bats outdoors are fantastic. We’re planning on building a couple of batboxes. Nothing better for keeping the biting bugs down.
Bats indoors? Yikes. And I add my voice to the din of making sure that you see your doc about a rabies shot. You might feel a little silly, but your doc will tell you that you did exactly right to come in.
And it’s much better than turning into Cujo.
The Moar You Know
I’ll weigh in with quite a few of the other posters here:
RABIES
You do not screw around with bats. They’re a prime vector for the virus.
If you woke up with this thing in the house, I’d get your ass to a doctor and get Tunch to the vet. You won’t necessarily know if you’ve been bitten, and drowning in saliva because your own throat muscles are choking you to death is a really bad way to go.
If you can’t get it out, call an exterminator, or the cops. And then figure out how it got in your house and fix the entrance so ou don’t have to deal with this again.
Angela
I’ve had extensive dealings with bats in my former house. Bats are cool. Don’t kill them. They eat more than 1,000 mosquitoes a night– try 20,000, according to one pest control dude I talked to.
The way to get a bat out of your house: Corral pets into other rooms and shut those doors. Then open all the windows (take off screens) and doors and give the bat some time. It will fly out of its own accord, especially if you swipe at it with a broom to get it going.
Contrary to what others have said, the rabies risk is quite minimal.
Jon H
Did you at least try yelling “ABRACAPOCUS! POCUSCADABRA! WALLA WALLA WASHINGTON!” to see what would happen?
Just Some Fuckhead
Had a raccoon in the house once. Mrs. Fuckhead was calling the fuckhead cat in and a raccoon came in instead. She ran through the house, found me and woke me up saying “Something came in the house! Something came in the house!” By that time it was in the back bedroom hopping from dresser to dresser knocking shit off. We waited for it in the front room by the open door and it eventually came waddling down the hall towards us. By this time the fuckhead cat had finally come in. The cat saw the raccoon and hissed once then went into the kitchen to eat.
The raccoon saw the cat hiss once and then went crazy, running right for Mrs. Fuckhead where she was standing on the couch. She went screaming and flying over to the loveseat and then the raccoon followed her there. Then she went screaming and running to behind me where I was standing naked on a drink cooler at the entrance to the kitchen. Then the raccoon got up on the speaker between the loveseat and the open door and peered outside. After about five minutes of this, he jumped out and left.
I haven’t really liked cats since. I have a dog now and he dutifully removes the critters that come in the house. Except for the recent snake but thats a whole other kind of crazy animal-in-the-house story.
jake
I take it Morgantown doesn’t run to an animal control service, but I’m very sorry there will be no video of John Cole doing battle with a little brown bat.
I hope it was a little brown bat. If you had a big brown bat on your wall and thought it was just a random brown splotch I’ll have to wonder about the level of your toilet training.
Don’t worry about the rabies unless it had contact with you, but do check Tunch for bites. Then call in a company licensed to deal with bats to make sure they don’t have a way into your house. They could be roosting in your attic or between the siding and inner wall of your house but if your laws are like Maryland’s you won’t be able to exclude the colony until September.
ThymeZone
If already posted, my apologies, but please read this.
The risk of rabies is quite real, people die from bat bites. Not often, but often enough to make it a valid concern.
Sirkowski
So I guess the Clinton Derangement Syndrom really was just rabbies? lol
I kid, I kiiiiiiid!
fishbane
Which is good, because I was beginning to look crazy running around my apartment with my door and windows open wielding a broom, a bucket, and a beach towel.
You clearly don’t have as much fun as I do. That’s tame, plus, you had an excuse.
Joshua Norton
Hmmm. I’ve had dates that ended that way.
The Other Steve
My grandparents house used to get bats all the time.
There was a tennis racket in each bedroom for just suck an occasion. Just take a good swing, then sweep it into a paper bag and take it outside and dump it.
I don’t have any problem killing intruders in my home, whether it be mice, bats, snakes or cockroaches. And I’ve had all of them at one time or another in my life.
Helena Montana
I knew somebody who got bitten by a bat–he had to undergo the course of rabies shots–and that was before the newer, kinder, gentler rabies shots.
Standard BS
A bat was flying around the house one night last summer. I put on my bee suit (I have a hive of honey bees), got the kitchen strainer, found the bat, put it over it, slipped a piece of cardboard under it, brought it outside and let it go.
Most Americans basically hate nature, that’s why they are so eager to destroy it. They like the look of nature, the aesthetics of it, but once the critters show up and the bugs start biting, it’s time to start whacking things.
Chuck Adkins
I was going to say it, but someone beat be to it. crap.
Which means, someone was on the same wavelength as me. Which is pretty freakin’ scary, if you ask me. ;)
Trabb's Boy
Our cat used to climb up on the roof, catch the damned things, then release them in the house alive. I got pretty adept at the tupperware thing.
Cat’s too old and lazy now, but I miss the little buggers. Coolest animal, bats. Go under a streetlight sometime when they’re out. If you toss a pebble in the air they’ll follow it nearly to the ground before veering off with a high-pitched “fuck you.”
Jon H
One of the new postdocs at the neuroscience lab I work at spent his prior research gig working with bats.
ThymeZone
Okay, well I hope you have enough information now to at least take precautions with the damned thing. And if there is any chance that you have been bitten, see a doctor immediately.
And, from now on, when we suggest that you might be foaming at the mouth, we expect to be taken seriously.
Cain
Dammit, Genine, I was going to use that line! I knew someone was going to say it.. :-) “I do believe, there’s a BAT in my BELFREY”.. great line.
I don’t even kill ants or spiders. I pick em up and throw em outisde. I’m a pro-life you know. I once saw a spider spawn… it looked like hundreds of spiders fanning out all at once. I was never so disheartened in my life.
cain
Mary
I promise to stop worrying if John can assure us that his bedroom door was closed and the bat couldn’t have bitten him in his sleep.
If the door was open, all bets are off. Don’t make me tagteam with TZ on the anxious momma routine.
John Cole
No way I was going to kill the bat- I live in West Virginia, and we have lots of bugs. And no, I was not bitten. I found it this morning in the living room, nowhere near where I sleep, and it never got close to me until I cornered it with a bucket and got it outside.
Cain
I hate reality. In the comics, you after some hand waving get all the powers of a bat and like do cool stuff. (or if you’re unlucky, you turn into man-bat which would kind of suck)
cain
Cain
Right, but you can’t really account for where it was when you were sleeping, yes?
cain
John Cole
No, but I can account for where I was, which is in my bedroom with the door shut.
Cain
Then I guess you’re safe. Remember, you’re an institution now, you gotta protect your brand. :-)
cain
passerby
I don’t even have a fly swatter, I shoo ’em out.
T
CaseyL
Oh, I draw the lethal line at flies – but everything else is welcome to visit or live here.
I had a bat fly into my house a few years ago. I was on the phone, in the living room, with the sliding glass door wide open to let in the fresh air, and saw ‘something’ fly in. Knew immediately it was a bat, not a bird – their flight patterns are entirely different- and followed it upstairs, where it flew into the spare bedroom, hung from the molding, and went to sleep. Poor thing must’ve been exhausted, from heaven knows what.
I left it alone while I called around to find out the best way to put it back outside. I am completely softminded about animals, and would have been perfectly happy to pick the bat up in my bare hands, but I’ve had the “They Could Have Rabies!!” drummed into me for too long.
Anyway, how I got rid of the bat:
Take a cardboard tube, like from a paper towel roll. Stuff one end with wadded up newspaper.
Holding the open end of the tube under the bat, take a spatula and gently – gently! – pry the sleeping bat’s feet off the wall so that he falls into the tube. The bat will slide down the tube, and come to rest on top of the wadded up newspaper.
Then take the tube outside and turn it upside down so the bat can slide out.
My little guy did exactly that, and took wing the instant he was clear of the tube.
Krista
I don’t kill spiders, as they’re another beneficial insect. And anything outside is left alone to do what it wants. But I draw the line at ants inside (I’ve battled with those little fuckers every spring for three years now.) And if a mosquito gets in the house, I’m killing it. Any other bug or beastie gets the tupperware-cardboard treatment to bring it outside.
I leave inchworms alone, though. They can stay. They’re cute little buggers, and I like watching them. Plus they remind me of that inchworm song, which I first saw on The Muppet Show.
Darkness
I would second or third others. Contact with a bat that is ill enough to wander into human living areas (and if they do that they ARE ill) is a serious health risk. Yeah they are cute and they are wonderful ecological creatures. We have a bat house and everything, so I don’t say this just anti-bat: their teeth are too small to always detect a bite in human skin. Rabies shots are no big deal, we got them for India, where 30k die a year from rabies.
CJ
About 3% of bats tested in a recent study in Minnesota had rabies, so it is out there. On the other hand, the only reason you really need to kill the thing for is expediency or if you have a bite. A tennis racket is the best tool for this.
Tunch would have caught the bugger eventually. Cats are lazy but bats are too much fun to play with once they hit the floor.
CJ
LanceThruster
As kids in summer we used to shine flashlights straight up into the night. Making searchlight arcs, we would catch glimpses of bats swooping down on the bugs drawn to the light. It was like the Battle of Britain courtesy of nature. I don’t even know if we have the bats anymore (suburban tract homes). Guess the bugs won.
—–
F.W. Murnau: Albin, collect the wooden stake and return it to its rightful place; it is necessary for the final frame, to remind us of the inadequacies of our plans, our contingencies, every missed train and failed picnic, every lie to a child.
Time will no longer be a dark spot on our lungs. They will no longer say ‘you had to have been there’, because the fact is, Albin, we were.
—–
Lestat: Evil is a point of view. God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves.
JPL
An omen!
Todd
You are far, far more likely to contract rabies from “man’s best friend” than from a bat. The vast majority of people who are bitten by bats are trying to handle them at the time, such as trying to get them out of the house.
The wings on a bat are fragile, and if they get broken they can’t fly. This means they are vulnerable to predators and more importantly, it means that they starve. So, yeah, they will bite you if they think you are likely to break their wings, however well-intentioned you may be
Also, trying to get a bat to willingly go outside in broad daylight is not an attractive option to the bat. At dusk, they will leave on their own accord if you leave them an exit. But it is important to find out how the bat got inside, or there will be more in future.
Bats really have no interest in hurting humans, and have a “live and let live” approach towards their fellow mammals. I have done bat surveys around Minnesota for years now, and I am always amazed at the lengths that bats go to to avoid close human contact.
YellowJournalism
And so another hero emerges!
“I always said four heads were better than one.”
nightjar
A couple of years ago I had this little spider who decided to spend the winter living in the bathroom sink drain. I usually don’t like them cause I got bit by several baby Brown Recluses one day while in the Army, but I let him live there for several months.
Whenever I use the sink, I’d first sprinkle a few drops of water into the drain so it’d come out and not get washed away. When spring came it left for greener pastures, I guess.
JenJen
Just Some Fuckhead’s story made me LOL. Best wild-animal-in-the-house story EVAH.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thanks. I’ve thought about starting an AnimalHouse blog because this shit just keeps happening. Aside from the raccoon, I’ve had a rabbit, a snake, a fieldmouse, birds (lost count how many) and a couple frogs. Mostly these days it’s the stupid cat bringing them in, sometimes dead, sometimea alive but always left somewhere interesting.
Tom W.
For all those times I’ve thought, “Cole is just batshit crazy” about something – finally, vindication.
Guav
Unless you see it fly in and fly out without touching anyone, you have to try to capture the bat because you have to get it tested for rabies—you don’t always know if a bat has bitten you because they don’t always leave a mark. Rabies is essentially 100% fatal after symptoms have started to show—there has only been one known case of survival in which the patient received no treatment and lived.
So basically, what I am trying to say is that now that the bat is gone and you don’t know whether it had rabies or not, you really should err on the side of safety and get vaccinated, because if it bit you while you were sleeping, by the time you start to feel the symptoms it will be too late.
I don’t want to sound alarmist, but there’s no way around it—you don’t get second chances with rabies, it’s incurable after the onset of symptoms (did I mention that yet?).
And since you write one of my favorite blogs, I will cry, and my political life will be worse off for it.
spacecaptain
Next time vacuum it up with your wet/dry vac when it’s sitting on the wall. When I had one I spent 20 minutes chasing it around with every implement you can imaagine and then my wife told me the right way to do it. When I opened the vac up outside, the bat flew away.
Jon H
John,
Was it a Moonbat?
Jon H
JenJen wrote:
Nah, the best is the one from This American Life, about a cop’s first day on the job. Homeowners interrupt romantic evening to call police about squirrel in the attic. Dropped flashlight breaks homeowner’s (husband’s) nose. Squirrel hides under couch. Cops use pillows under the couch to squeeze the squirrel out from under the couch. Squirrel dashes out, and straight into fire in fireplace. Catches fire. Runs back under the couch. Couch catches fire. Cops flip couch over and use cushions to put out fire.
Janus Daniels
Please do the rabies routine.
That said,
Do you feel a thirst for blood?
Do you see your reflection?
If you wrap your towel around your head, do bats think that they can’t see you?
MissLaura
1) Fifth or sixteenth or whatever that bites can be subtle — a few years ago (ok, 10) the NYT had a story about people who had died of rabies after being in a room with a bat but not believing themselves to have been bitten. Naturally 2 days after this story ran, I was out for a walk with my mom and a bat flew into the side of my head before flying into a tree. Which leads me to
2)the newer, kinder, gentler rabies shots, they are neither kind nor gentle. The series you get over a month is fine, regular intramuscular shots. The initial shots are holy-crap painful. I mean, think you’re going to pass out, stay sore for days painful.
Blister
Had a lot of bats inside out here in the woods, and aside from the rabies problem and the spooky noiseless way they fly around the worst side-effect is the batshit. When batshit starts piling up inside, you’ll know you’ve got a bat problem.
It’s pretty expensive, but #12 shot in a .22 pistol trains your average house bat to stay away. Moth-balls might work, too, but that stuff degrades your air quality worse than incense and scented candles.
Then seal up even the tiniest little cracks. I’ve seen bats slip up underneath cross boards through the bevels in tongue-and-groove siding.
Jay C
We have had a couple of country houses where bats have been an occasional problem: once in our old house, and once in our new one: and I used (Mrs. C. fled with the cats into a closed room) the same method both times: a swimming-pool net on its long pole (although any wide-mouthed net – like a butterfly net – would work just as well).
Bats hanging out IN your house (in the daytime) are likely to be pretty torpid unless prodded: I just sneaked up on them with the net, popped it over the little fellow, and carefully moved the net onto the floor, and hence out the door. Of course, the first time it happened, I got the net with the bat in it as far as the front door, and the little fucker slipped out, and started flying madly around the house: with me following it frantically waving a pool net around, cursing at the top of my voice, and probably looking like something from an old Looney Tunes short. Finally got the bat out, though.
Second the warnings about rabies & cats, etc: bats are useful creatures, true: but cats and humans even more so.
Conservatively Liberal
Fixed. ;)
Big E
just make sure yer waring yer
Bat Boots when walkin’ around the humble chateau
Janefinch
LOL The time I dealt with a bat, it was with a broom and a pillow. Sword and shield indeed!
YellowJournalism
As funny as that is, I would say the image of “naked on a cooler” beats flaming couch cushions any time.
All this talk about bats, racoons, and other animals keeps reminding me of the movie “The Great Outdoors” with John Candy and Dan Aykroyd:
chopper
shoulda fixed it up west virginny style –
step 1: in a large, deep kettle, bring one gallon of peanut oil to 350 degrees.
step 2: using broom, shoo bat into the kitchen…
Shawn
I woke up one night last year to see my husband doing some bizarre dance around the bedroom in the dark. He was waving a towel, swooping, and turning. A very strange thing to wake up to, let me tell you.
Me: “What the hell are you doing?”
Him: “There’s a bat in here.”
Me: Why don’t you turn on the light?”
Him: “I didn’t want to wake you up.”
We turned on the lights and it instantly lit on the blinds and turned upside down to sleep. My husband gently pulled it off with a towel around his hand and freed it outside. We never did figure out how it got inside.
If you watch a bat in flight, be sure to notice how it zigzags. Every time it changes direction, it’s chasing a bug. I live a mile from a river (and a bazillion mosquitos) and love bats!!
susan
We had a bat in our house a few years ago. And it was freaking everyone out including my husband, who isn’t afraid of anything EXCEPT bats and birds. So I called my father in law. He came in like a cool customer, said give me a tuperware container and a lid. Went up to the bat, put the container over it, slid the lid up to the wall onto the container, took it outside and let it go. 1, 2, 3 bam. Some people are better at handling animal evictions than others.
Don
I guess I am the only person who flashed on “Love At First Bite” and the dude screaming “come back black chicken, come back!” as vampire-as-bat flies off into the night.
Tax Analyst
I guess the silverfish I spotted coming out of some old newspapers Saturday night is kinda tame in comparison.
But silverfish really DO give me the creeps, for whatever reason.
That’s probably why I have such a wimpy-sounding job. No bats, no bugs, no arachnoids. Just Tax and software shit.
Glenda
Last night I woke up to see something climbing my bedroom door and over the top of it and out towards the living room. I think it was a bat but I can’t find it in the house now. I live in a new house so I shouldn’t have any opening he could squeeze through to get in the house. I did leave the door open for a few minutes the day before, but aren’t they supposed to be sleeping during the day, anyway?
I feel like I am going crazy. We have a cat and he doesn’t seem to be on the prowl for anything suspicious but on the other hand when we had squirrels up at the cabin he was gleefully ignoring them – he’s a persian and a sleeper.
Also, should I get a rabies shot when I can’t even find the damn thing? Can anyone help me get some sanity back into my life?