Bat Care

The bat my mother-in-law found in her living room is a big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus, as evidenced by her long, foxy muzzle. Little brown bats look kind of smoosh-faced but not in a cute, Boston-terrier like way; more in an otherworldly way. Their faces and muzzles are furry, not naked like the big brown's. Here's a photo of a little brown bat from batguys.com. I could definitely love a little brown bat, but it isn't as sweet and familiar looking as the big brown bat.


Little brown bat, Myotis lucifugus. Photo from batguys.com

Big brown bats are irreproachably cute micro foxes. And they're only big in comparison to pipistrelles and little brown bats. They're about 4 to 5 inches long, with a 11-13 inch wingspan. They weigh only 1/2 to 5/8 ounce. They don't have hollow bones or air sacs like birds; their flight is the feat of an acrobat who must flap continuously to stay aloft.

The vast majority of bats found in homes are big brown bats. They seem to be better (or worse, depending on how thrilled you are at finding one in your kitchen) at getting into the occupied parts of houses.

Care of overwintering bats is not difficult, because they sleep all day and almost around the clock. I can change the papers, food and water in her tank without ever disturbing her as she hangs on the sidewall, hidden in her toweling. She eats live mealworms, which are fed my new favorite nutritious substance, chick starter, with carrots for moisture. This is called "gut loading." The idea is, if you feed the worms good stuff, the bat or whatever eats them gets good stuff, too. I can attest that mealworms grow like Topsy when kept in chick starter. It would seem to me to be a good idea for anyone feeding mealworms to wild birds to keep them in chick starter rather than plain old fashioned oats. But then I'm all about taking care of wild things, and I'm thinking a lot more about nutrition these days, having had some evidence that we can hurt the things we love most with the wrong foods.

When the towels get soiled, every four days or so, I gently fold her into her dirty washcloth and place her in a lidded Tupperware. Then I thoroughly clean the tank and gently transfer her to freshly-laundered towels on the tank wall. That's my favorite part, because I get to talk to her and transfer her from one towel to another. At first I had to unhook her feet from the dirty towel, but now she scuttles up onto the clean towel as soon as I open my hand. Bats learn fast.

Routine care doesn't make her mad any more. I get just a little whiff of musk from her facial glands, a pleasantly skunky waft, a desultory chitter. And her fur is smooth and shiny, not all rumbly like it was when I first got her. She's been preening. I can see the towels shake as she rearranges her fur. Sometimes I see her licking her hooks and feet and armbones like a cat. She can scratch her head and neck with her hind feet. Having always thought of bats as kind of bound up in their own wing and tail membranes, I'm pleased and surprised to see how flexible and mobile they are.

I risk a stroke toward her back end as I hold her head and wings securely in the glove. It's amazing. Her fur is so soft you can't even feel it. She doesn't so much as turn her head, but she kind of shrinks in when I touch her. Her whole being vibrates, and I imagine she is talking, saying something about my temerity for daring such a thing.




She hangs there all day, sleeping and preening and scratching, folded into her towels. She much prefers dark colored cloths. She's become so tame that it's hard to get her to chitter and cuss at me now. I wish I had taken photos of her teeth when she was just captured--they are impressive! Edges like a pinking shears, oversized for her tiny mouth, and strong--she would bite the tweezers and nearly twist them from my fingers, clang!! No wonder I was a little eepy about her.

Here's the not-so-easy part of keeping a bat over the winter. It needs to be released when the weather warms reliably in spring, when the nights stay in the 50's. And several weeks before that, it needs to have a heated place where it can exercise and get its muscles conditioned for flight. And there's the rub. I have a tent made of nylon screening that would be a fabulous flight space, except for the fact that any big brown bat worth its salt would be outta there in two minutes. They're escape artists par excellence. At the Ohio Wildlife Center, they have to roll up towels under the flight room door, for goodness' sake, because the bats will go out that tiny space. Smart, smart, smart. And tiny, tiny, tiny, and endlessly flattenable, like flying Flat Stanleys, bats are. So I'll have to head to Columbus for flight conditioning several weeks before release time. And pray that Dee Dee doesn't have her bab(ies) before she's released near her maternity roost.


All right. I've made some of this bat care thing sound easy. But I have to tell you that you MUST have a permit from your state to keep any wild animal, and for a rabies vector species like a bat, you must also have a RVS certification on that permit. This is for your own protection as well as the bat's. They're not pets. They do a good job of looking like them on my blog. But I don't cuddle them and I handle them as little as possible. They're wild animals and they're destined for release.

The day my permit came in the mail with the rabies vector certification on it, I decided that I wouldn't trade it for a diamond ring. What can you learn from a diamond ring?

Big Brown Batgirl

Big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus

Fasten your seatbelts. I'm gonna go all bats on you. And you're going to love it. Bats are pretty much my favorite animal now, right after ligers. Which, as you probably know, are bred mainly for their skills in magic.

Back to bats.

It's a late winter Wednesday. My mother-in-law, Elsa Thompson, notices a bat flying around in her living room and kitchen. While most people would scream and dive for cover, Elsa takes mild note of the event and hopes she will eventually find the bat where she can catch it. She's done this before. And she is not your garden-variety mother-in-law, being co-founder of both Bird Watcher's Digest and The Marietta Natural History Society.

Friday. Elsa opens the basement door and sees a bat roosting in the jamb, near her pegboard full of pots and pans. She captures it in a towel and installs it in a glass vase with a towel in the bottom and colander over the top. Later, she adds a ball of raw hamburger and a cut-up grape. She calls me and tells me she's seen the bat tugging at the grape. What else should she offer it? That evening, I swoop in on my way to the movies and give the bat a dozen mealworms off the end of a tweezers. Thank goodness I always keep mealworms on hand in a couple of plastic shoeboxes, where they reproduce and offer themselves up to save whatever foundling I have on hand, even in January. The bat is very hungry and thirsty, having expended valuable energy by flying around a warm house for three days. It's evidently found its way downstairs from the cold attic, where it should be hibernating.

While we're holding the bat in a towel, it squirms around and gets away, making loops around the living room. It vanishes and I stand stock-still in the living room, looking carefully. I find it resting atop a warm DVD player, and pick it up in the towel to continue feeding it. I will not realize until much later how lucky I was to have relocated that animal.

Sunday. I pick the bat up in the evening. Elsa's been ably caring for it and feeding it in the meantime. I've called the Ohio Wildlife Center and found out that protocol for a healthy bat found in a warm house in midwinter is to keep it until it can be released outside in spring. Oh! My! That sounds like a job! Thank goodness I'm permitted and certified by the State of Ohio to handle and keep rabies vector species like bats. Even so, I make plans to have Bill transport it to the OWC clinic in Columbus in the morning, where they are hosting eight overwintering bats in just the same straits. He's on his way to the airport anyway. You see, I am just a little eepy about handling and keeping a bat in my house. I am thinking rabies and disease and gloves and towels and guano and kids and eep eep eep.

Who are you, little one? You're so foreign to me. I have no mental template for how you should look or behave. I need to know you.

Something happens to my brain (not a dread viral disease, but a chemical shift) between Sunday night and Monday morning, and I decide not to unload the bat on OWC just yet. I've been researching bat care online. And I want to make sure it can feed itself from a dish. I want to make sure it's in top condition before I fob it off on anyone else. I want to get to know it better. And I have a small suspicion that I'm falling out of fear and into love.


It's a female, and she seems thin and ribby to me, maybe a bit dehydrated. She chitters and cusses at me in an ultrasonic voice when I handle her. She sounds like an angry hummingbird, bzzbzzbzzzbzzbzzzbzzbzzz! For the next two days, I hold her in my glove while I feed her crickets twice a day. I can feel her voice vibrating even when I can't hear her. Then I find a good piece online, written by Susan Bernard of Basically Bats, called Bats in Captivity, which warns that hand-fed bats might not take food again on their own. Uh-oh. I decide to offer mealworms and crickets in a little shallow dish, and water in another as they suggest, and quit handling her to feed her. It seems a better solution all around.

By now the bat is installed in a plastic pet carrier meant for small mammals and reptiles. I've got a washcloth doubled and draped down the side where she can hang upside down in comfortable darkness. The food and water dishes are on paper towels below her. Since she'd be hibernating anyway, she doesn't need to fly around, and she's perfectly still and sleeping all day. The next morning, the mealworm dish stands empty. Well, that was easy. The next night, I creep in with a little flashlight cupped in my palm so only a tiny ray of light sneaks out, and I catch her elbowing over to her mealworm dish, which she lustily empties. I let a little more light fall on her and she glares at me and retreats into her washcloth roost, a tiny, deeply offended Dracula, fleeing the dawn. By now I am completely in love. I'm glad I don't have to handle her and stress her, and she is, too.

Maybe I can do this bat care gig. She's a whole lot less trouble than a macaw. And she is really, really adorable.

I'll be speaking about this little messenger from above (and a bunch of other stuff) starting at 5:30 PM tomorrow night, Friday, March 12, at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, for its William and Nancy Klamm Memorial Lecture in its Explorer series. There will be live music, refreshment, exhibits, a book signing, Phoebe and a very excited, dino-crazy Liam in attendance. I've spent the week tearing my Letters from Eden talk all to bits as only a crazy Mac Lady can. It's all new. If you're anywhere near Cleveland, I'd love to meet you. Remember to blurt "BLOG!" You can register here.

If you miss the Cleveland talk, come hear me at nearby Black River Audubon's "Outstanding Speakers" series the very next night, Saturday, March 13, at 7 pm. It'll be at Lorain Co. (Ohio) Metroparks' Carlisle Visitor Center. Details are here. Another big weekend!

And on Sunday I'll tell you more about the big brown bat. There is a lot to tell.