Going Batty

On a recent weekend, we celebrated the coming of late-spring/early-summer by taking out the charcoal grill and cooking one of our favorite summer meals: marinated flank steak and grilled asparagus. The weather was unseasonably warm - in the 90s, unusual for May - and so we had the windows and doors open for much of the day.

On Saturday night after dinner, Corinne and I sat down to watch a movie before bed. About 20 minutes in to The Simpsons Movie, I thought I heard some unusual sounds coming from somewhere behind me. I paused the movie, turned around and discovered something flying back and forth in our Great Room. After a dozen or more laps, it settled down to perch in the rafter.

Sometime during the day, a bat had flown in to the house.

Each spring after the irrigation ditches are turned on, we anxiously await the coming of the bats to help rid the yard of bugs (particularly mosquitos). The bat house mounted on our garage seems to be occupied from July through September, but this is the earliest we've seen a bat - not to mention the first time we've had one get inside.

Corinne ran upstairs (and closed the door) to call her father for advice, while I consulted the oracle of Google for some tips on how to handle it. Most of the suggestions we found involved cajoling or convincing the bat into a box; unfortunately, our bat was perched on a beam 20'+ in the air, so that wasn't an option. (The height is also the reason that it's difficult to clean the cobwebs.) With no other ideas at hand, we decided on a "let's hope he does the right thing" strategy: we would open a door in the Great Room, open several windows and remove the screens, and go to sleep. Our hope was that sometime overnight, the bat would find his way out one of the open windows. We turned off all lights in the house to avoid attracting bugs, and just hoped that no additional wildlife would find their way inside during the night. No one wants to wake up to find a coyote sleeping on the couch.

Come Sunday morning, lo and behold, the bat was gone. We didn't have any bugs in the house (or no more than usual, anyway), so perhaps he cleaned up on his way out.

- Mike (& Corinne)