Well it’s OFFICIAL! I’m afraid of bats!

[vash]

My wife basically screamed. She yells, “ there’s a rat in the fireplace!”

I grabbed a flashlight and charged the fireplace with, “oh, I got this!”

It was a freaking bat! Locked safely behind the glass , moving around on the fake logs.
“Yyyyaaaaaaaahhhh! I more felt myself let it out of my mouth, more than I heard it. My wife had run off. I found her standing in the backyard, standing on a lawn chair. “. “Ugh honey, it’s not a rat, it’s a bat and I’m pretty sure it can fly up to you in that chair”.

Pretty sure my HR was 110 as I took the glass off and started pulling out fake logs. Faack! It heard me coming and I heard it go up the flue. It’s silent now. Prob camped out in there.

House for sale. It looked like Dracula.

[GH85Carrera]

Light the fire. That will smoke him out, or cook him.

[Arizona_928]

My advice with mammals that would require you to get a rabies vaccine if bit… kill the stupid thing and do not try to catch and release….

[Mike Andrew]

Beneficial creatures but very creepy. Chimney cap time!

[911 Rod]

I built bat houses to attract them. Cool creatures.

[mgatepi]

We had one of our cats carry in a brown bat into our family room last fall. The cat came in through the cat door and my wife and I watched as he dropped it onto the floor!! My wife screamed, the bat flew off into our room....needless to say it went down hill from there. I did manage to catch the little guy and return him to the outside. I used thick fire place gloves and grabbed him when he landed. He gave me a nice little smile showing his pointy little fangs.....it freaked me out so bad.......creepy little things

[gacook]

Reminds me of a family vacation we took to Glacier National Park several years ago...

Big family trip; wife's parents, sisters, their husbands/kids, and our family. Got a big cabin to house all of us (we do this every couple years). One night, there was a bat in one of the rooms (oldest sister and her husband, a HUGE guy but a city boy). They freaked out, thought they got it out of the room and then barricaded themselves in. You got it, the bat was still in the room. Next morning, HUGE brother-in-law wakes up tiny brother-in-law (yup, that makes me the "just right" brother-in-law ) super early telling him the bat's still in the room. He goes in, throws a towel over it, kills it. They spent the rest of that day looking for a vet to test the bat for rabies. We'll never let him live it down.

Fast forward about a year and I see a bat walking in my bedroom. Weird looking. Initially, I thought it was a frog when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I killed it, then called the brother-in-law (original bat killer) and in a whiney voice asked him to come kill a bat for me. We got a good laugh out of it.

This same trip, one of my nephews sprayed himself in the face with bear spray. I love my wife's family.

[masraum]

ROFLMAO! Thanks for the story, Vash! You never fail to disappoint and entertain.

Originally Posted by 911 Rod

I built bat houses to attract them. Cool creatures.

Yep, super cool as long as their are outside and not inside. Significantly less cool if they are inside.

Originally Posted by mgatepi

We had one of our cats carry in a brown bat into our family room last fall. The cat came in through the cat door and my wife and I watched as he dropped it onto the floor!! My wife screamed, the bat flew off into our room....needless to say it went down hill from there. I did manage to catch the little guy and return him to the outside. I used thick fire place gloves and grabbed him when he landed. He gave me a nice little smile showing his pointy little fangs.....it freaked me out so bad.......creepy little things

LOL!

Last weekend, my wife went out on the porch and grabbed a pair of jeans that had been left outside because they were really dirty. She carried them into the laundry room and I heard a scream. I ran to the laundry room and she said "I saw something jump off of the jeans out of the corner of my eye and heard a thud down here. I don't know what it was!"

Fortunately, it was just a wren. We were lucky to be able to get the wren from the inside to the outside fairly quickly and easily with no harm coming to anyone involved.

At the time, I told her, "It could be worse. It could be a bat, a snake, or a tarantula."

Thanks for proving me right.

Funny, she told the story and someone responded that they'd had a bat get in their house while the wife was home alone. They got a text from the wife, "There's a bat in the house. My keys are in the mailbox, and I'm at my mom's. The bat can have the house."

[masraum]

Originally Posted by mgatepi

We had one of our cats carry in a brown bat into our family room last fall. The cat came in through the cat door and my wife and I watched as he dropped it onto the floor!! My wife screamed, the bat flew off into our room....needless to say it went down hill from there. I did manage to catch the little guy and return him to the outside. I used thick fire place gloves and grabbed him when he landed. He gave me a nice little smile showing his pointy little fangs.....it freaked me out so bad.......creepy little things

your story reminds me of this...

[stevej37]

I'm sure I mentioned this before...anyway, I was up on a 16ft extension ladder removing my house shutters to repaint them. The ladder stood in the lawn grass and was slightly wobbly. I got up to the top of the second story and was even with top of the shutter to remove it. They are attached with plastic pins and to remove them you just need to give them a good yank.

The top came out with the second pull and a bat was sleeping behind it. That bat flew directly at my face before veering off and missing me.

I damn near fell off the ladder...so, yes, bats can kill you.

[vash]

Proof of life. Dracula.

[oldE]

I know I have been more disappointed with some of my Pelican brothers in the past, but some of the posts above make me sad.
Bat's are great insect catchers. A little brown bat can just about eat its own weight in bugs every night. A couple of years ago, my granddaughter and I built a bat habitat and installed it on the end of the garage. A few years ago a fungal infection called white nose disease wiped out about 95% of the bat population in Eastern Canada. They are starting to make a comeback, but since they have only one pup each year, they need help.
Don't freak out if one gets into your house. Just man up and relocate it back outside.

Best
Les

[onewhippedpuppy]

Kill it with fire is actually a pretty easy solution in this case.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by oldE

I know I have been more disappointed with some of my Pelican brothers in the past, but some of the posts above make me sad.
Bat's are great insect catchers. A little brown bat can just about eat its own weight in bugs every night. A couple of years ago, my granddaughter and I built a bat habitat and installed it on the end of the garage. A few years ago a fungal infection called white nose disease wiped out about 95% of the bat population in Eastern Canada. They are starting to make a comeback, but since they have only one pup each year, they need help.
Don't freak out if one gets into your house. Just man up and relocate it back outside.

Best
Les

I almost bought a bat house in our old home. I had the perfect place to put it too, but that was going to put the guano dripping all over our porch roof. I was very bummed not to put the bat house up.

We've moved to the country, and I've never seen a bat out here. But we also have tons of barn swallows, and almost no mosquitos. The barn swallows nest on our porch. They make a mess, but are fun to listen too and watch.

Houston has a bridge that's home to something like 250k bats. During one of the flooding events that occurred in the few years before 2020, some were trapped under the bridge and some were killed. I don't know what sort of impact there was on the total population. The freeze from earlier this year and presumably from Feb 2021 also presented a risk to the bats.

We used to live about 1/2 mile from the bats. When I worked until 9pm downtown on the 9th floor, I used to frequently see the bats stream past our windows shortly after sunset. It was like something out of a movie and pretty creepy to have hundreds of bats stream past your 9th floor window at 830 at night. We were about 3 miles from their roost under the bridge so it is interesting to me that there was still a thick stream of them by the time they got there.

[cabmandone]