Bat Advice

Posted by Conor O'Neill on Sunday, August 31, 2008

That has to be the strangest blogpost title I’ve ever used.

We arrived back from our much-needed and many-years-delayed holiday to France yesterday (long blog post to follow soon on that). A few hours later Catherine picked up a j-cloth in the kitchen sink to find……a bat!

It was absolutely tiny, barely bigger than my thumb and we had no idea what to do with it. I gently picked it up with a cloth (are they disease carriers?) and brought it outside down to the far corner of the garden. It made no attempt to fly but just slowly crawled across the patio.

A few hours later I was feeling bad about it and went in search. I found it half way up the back wall hanging upside-down. My worry was that some of the horrible local crows might eat it. So I nudged it onto a stick (squeamish huh?) and carried it to our shed. I gently put the stick up against the corner of the roof and it climbed into a nook. Happily for it, there was a spider there. I think it’s now an ex-spider.

This afternoon, I went for a look and discovered it was still there, well hidden in the nook, which was a relief.

But is that it? Do I leave it alone? Is it a small breed or a baby? Might it be hurt? Are they rare? What is their natural habitat? And most importantly of all, how the hell did it get into our sink? Down the chimney? All thoughts and pointers appreciated.

Here’s a wee pic of the little guy in his current lodgings:

Bat in Bandon


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