Bats

Bats bring to my mind belfries, flying about, radar, vampires, and Hallowe'en. I have never had much to do with bats, but I do remember that they also carry rabies, and if you are bitten by one, you need the rabies shots. When we first moved to our house in Omaha, we were to invited over for dinner at Beth and Harold's home, learning that he was a train dispatcher for Union Pacific Railways, and she worked for the Henry Doorly Zoo and was an expert in bats. I don't know if she has ever been bitten, but she has had the shots for rabies.

Sometime later, one dark morning when I was up early, something flew into our house and circled the living room, then flew back outside or into the attached garage. Now, HW2 is quite afraid of mice, which do not fly at all, so I was tempted not to tell her about the flying object I had experienced. However, I decided the best part of valor was to tell her and prepare to move. Much to my surprise, HW2 did not seem to be afraid of flying things, and moving was not necessary. Some weeks later we had Beth and Harold over for dinner and related the story of the flying animal. Delighted, Beth said, "Oh, you have bats! How wonderful!" Wonderful might not describe how I felt about bats. However, right then in the middle of this conversation our resident bat flew through the living room, made a circle in the air, and then flew up stairs. Now really, this is taking bat friendship too far for me. I do not want bats in my bedroom. Beth calmly got up and went upstairs, removed a pillowcase, and caught the bat while it was hanging onto the curtains, and returned downstairs with bat in hand. "It is a brown bat, a male in fact, and probably not happy to be caught," she said. We were amazed. After instructions, Beth put it in a jar for transporting and later took it home. Harold then tried to put it in a bat house which they had in their backyard, but it escaped. After about two weeks, one evening while sitting in our living room, our bat circled back through as if to say, "I'm home!" and flew back into the garage. He never flew in after that. So, we had bats and learned to keep the door connecting the garage to the house closed, and that kept the bats out of the house.

Bats do eat insects, being especially fond of mosquitoes, so really, we were glad to have them in the neighborhood, sort of a live and let-live attitude. In the process of selling our house, the new owners called one afternoon about whether we had a mice problem. I said we had not seen any mice since we had been there, but that most likely, they could easily get in through the garage. HW2 mentioned the occasional bat droppings in the garage and wondered if they had seen that, and thus the mice-in-house question. We wonder if the new owners have met our bat, yet. I hope that they keep the door to the garage closed.