More Heat, More Bats

The hot humid weather continued yesterday.  Despite having every window in the house wide open all night long, the house only cooled down to 77F by the morning when I closed the windows.  Normally, the cold nights cool the house down to 69F and then the house stays comfortable all day regardless of the daytime heat.  We didn't stand a chance yesterday and the air conditioner kicked on before noon.

Flash becomes very lethargic in the heat.  When Brett did the evening feeding, it was still in the mid 90s.  Flash dragged himself out of his stall into the pasture and walked right past the hay, down to the sandy area, where he lowered himself to the ground with a groan and stayed for an hour or so.  When the sun settled behind the trees and dropped out of sight below the ridge, he got up and ate his hay.

After feeding, Brett went down the mountain to a farewell dinner for someone at work.  My toe is still bandaged up like a tootsie pop and sore, so I stayed home.  After Brett left, I grabbed some plastic wrap from the kitchen to cover my toe bandage, and a rubber band from the desk, and headed down the hall to take a shower.  That's when I met up with the bat.  I don't think he left the other night -- Brett says he never actually saw the bat go out our bedroom door; he just assumed it had done so when he didn't see if flying around anymore.  I think it was resting on a ceiling beam.  Regardless, it was back.  I wrote about last night's encounter in a poem, on my poetry website here.

A few people have expressed concern about the bats and rabies.  Bats do carry rabies, but it isn't common (at least not here).  The rate is half of one percent of the bats in our area.  A bat in the house that seems content to be there is not a good thing and should be tested for rabies.  A bat in the house that wants the hell out -- that's a normal healthy bat.  The brown bats that live in the eaves of our front porch are beneficial and we have no desire to make them leave.  One brown bat can eat 600 bugs in a night; mosquitos, beetles, scorpions, and more.  The bats sleep during the day and come out at sundown, flying away over the ranch like commuters tumbling out of a subway and scattering all directions to go to work.

After the bat was safely outside, and after my shower, I made myself dinner.  I cooked up some onions, added a few chard leaves, Italian sausage and a handful of cherry tomatoes.  Then I cracked a few eggs into the mess, stirred it around a bit, topped it with some grated Parmesan cheese, popped it under the broiler to brown and scattered some fresh chopped basil on top.  And I poured myself a big glass of wine.

A Problem with the Bats

There is a colony of bats that live in the eaves of our front porch, close to the front door.  They have lived there for three or four years and we enjoy looking up into the eaves and seeing a line of little furry bodies dozing in the afternoons.  We have little tiny bats, small brown bats to be precise.  They eat insects from the garden, preferring potato bugs and scorpions; leaving bits of legs and bodies scattered on the ground outside our bedroom.  Sometimes in the evening I hear them squeaking as they fly off in search of dinner but generally they are quiet.  The bats take up residence in the eaves during the mid-afternoon.  I'm not sure where they hang out in the morning and I've never seen them arrive so maybe they are up inside the eaves where they can't be seen.

Yesterday, Camille noticed three baby bats on the ground.  They were small, hairless, eyes still closed and dead.   We have never found dead bats before.  I googled dead brown bats and found a link to the US Geological Survey who is tracking the spread of white nose syndrome in little brown bats.  The syndrome (a fungus) affects adult bats coming out of hibernation, primarily in the Northeastern US.  This didn't fit the description of what we found but I sent an email off to the biologist there anyway, and included some pictures.  I didn't expect to get much of a response, if any.

To give you an idea of how tiny these little pups are, this one is resting on top of a brick on the front walkway next to the front door sill.  Poor little thing.

This morning, I had a long email from the biologist.  She said it was not white nose syndrome, that she hadn't heard of any other cases like this in California, and could she give my phone number to the biologist with the California Dept of Fish and Game in case they wanted to follow up.  Of course.

In the meantime, Camille found another one who fell from the eaves in the morning and crept slowly, crawling along the bricks, until it found itself against the sill a bit further down from the one in the picture.  It squeezed itself into the corner, upside down, in a pathetic attempt to hang.  It squeeked faintly a few times and then was silent.  We monitored it all afternoon and at nightfall it was, amazingly, still alive.

Mid-afternoon, I received a call from the Dept of Fish and Game.  They were very interested in our bat situation.  We ruled out a temperature spike or other obvious cause.  Sometimes, a colony will lose pups due to dehydration or lack of food.  Regardless of the cause, it isn't a good thing.  Bats only have one pup a year so a loss of multiple pups isn't good.  I was on the phone and watching the email exchanges between the two departments the rest of the afternoon.  I am impressed.  These two ladies care about my little brown bats.  They want to research and see what is going on.  If I can collect three to five freshly dead bats, I will send them into the government lab.  The trick will be getting them fresh -- these little pups are so small that they shrivel up into nothing within hours of dying.

I hope we don't find anymore dead bat pups but if we do, I know what to do.

Bats In The Belfry

We have bats.  This is a good thing -- messy, but good.  Bats are wonderful for the garden and for pest control.  The Little Brown Bats that live in our front porch eaves eat insects.  One bat can eat 600 mosquitoes in an hour.  They are only 3 inches long so they are very compact munching machines.  I figure they are helping the garden and the horses - no mosquitoes, no West Nile Virus. 

Unfortunately, their night roost area is in the eaves of the front porch right next to the front door.

They've been using the same spot for a few years now.  The crevice they crowd into is small and we never would have found them if they hadn't left evidence below.

The covered porch runs the length of the front of the house.  This helps keep the south facing house cool in the summer.  Down at the far end of the porch, outside our bedroom, we have a sitting area with a couch and a couple chairs.  It's a wonderful place to relax and read a book.  Apparently, it's also the dining room for the bats.