A Batty Winter is 2023

It's time for a bat update. It's a bit much for Instagram and Facebook, and besides, I want the good stuff to go on the blog which is searchable and expandable. 2023 has been a surprisingly batty winter, with five clients coming in since right before Christmas. The weather has been pretty mild, save for a weeklong cold snap that sent night temperatures into the single digits. I emptied the Groanhouse, as is my wont, brought everything into the house, and hunkered down for the duration, only putting the plants back when it had warmed up considerably. And then the bats started coming into heated spaces around Marietta, and the pleas for help started, and I had to answer.

Jolie Blonde is possibly the cutest of the five (a dead heat, really, since they're all cute in their own ways) and she's also very calm and wicked smart. So far she's the only self-feeder I have, but I haven't really given them all ample chances to learn, to be truthful. She was seen clinging for days to an exposed brick wall behind People's Bank in Marietta, Ohio, and taken in on December 9. It took five days to get her to take mealworms. I gave her nestling bird formula until she was strong enough to chew. She came in at 17 gm, which is low normal for a big brown bat.  She weighs 19 with an empty tank now, so I have to watch  that she doesn't overeat and get too fat to fly. I can tell the second I pick a bat up whether it's in good weight or not. Kinda cool. I have marked the inside of each bat's right ear with a different color of acrylic paint. Jolie is orange. After three weeks in hibernation, she was not hungry, because she had eaten all the worms in her dish when the weather warmed up! 

This is Poppy. Pale pink in her ear marks her. She was found sleeping peacefully in an attic on January 21. Homeowners said nope so she was brought to me. Sigh. I wish they would have just let her leave come spring. But say "bat" and 99.99 percent of people say, "Not in my house/attic/basement/chimney!" She was in good shape at 17 gm, hibernating normally.

Carmelo is my only male. He's also the darkest, a deep espresso brown. And he's a sweetheart. He was found inside, hanging over the door at a local tattoo parlor. People who create tattoo art are generally very sympathetic toward bats, snakes, spiders and other fauna from which many people recoil. I like that about tattoo artists. Maybe it's because they wind up drawing a lot of those kinds of creatures in their work; maybe it's a more accepting and open state of mind. I love the way Carmelo snuffles around looking for another worm at the end of this clip.

These clips are very short because I am feeding the bats and making the videos all with my right hand while holding the animal in my left. I can only make a short clip because I have to pull my tight leather glove off my right hand with my teeth to make the video. I pull the glove off, give the bat a worm on tweezers, and then I have maybe ten seconds to make a video before the bat wants another worm. Then I pull the glove back on with my teeth. This is difficult to do through a surgical mask, but I have perfected the move. Haha! Needless to say I much prefer having Liam make the videos. 

More bats and some good news in my next post!