Fat Bats

I'm in Soldatna, Alaska now, finishing up our work at the fabulous Kenai Birding Festival with my best guy. This is a laundry morning, a repacking morning, a get-ready-for-a-big-day-morning, but I wanted to let you know what's been going on with The Battista Sisters. You remember, Mirabel and Stella, the two big brown bats we overwintered.

The Battista Sisters came to me in the first week of February 2012, having been found flying around a bedroom in an old house in Marietta, OH (Stella) and clinging to a brick pillar in a busy supermarket breezeway, six inches off the ground (Mirabel). 

I took them in, they bonded and became inseparable, and I kept them the rest of the winter, waiting for the weather to warm enough to release them. 

Oh, and I fed them. Mealworms. Boy did I feed them. 

I plan to write this up elsewhere, and spent a good long day on the jet to Soldatna writing about it, but the long and short of it is that I gave them too much food and really messed them up. They came to me in the 17-18 gm range. I left the in the garage hibernating in cool temperatures and as of March 1 they were still maintaining a weight of about 18 gm each. Perfect. But I got sloppy and started giving them more worms, just dumping a bunch in their bowl every morning, and by April 16 they were each topping 25 gm. ACK! How did that happen?

It turns out that you have to ration them to about 12 a day. I didn't know that. I gave them all they would eat, and that's a lot.

This is Mirabel, and it's what a 25-gm big brown bat looks like. She looks like a flying sofa pillow, that's what she looks like.

In this photo, I'm blowing on her back fur to reveal a huge U-shaped roll of fat around her bottom under her sweet pink skin. Oh-oh.

See how her whole stern section (the furred part) is U-shaped? It ought to be deltoid. Yeah, so should mine.
This is how a 25-gm big brown bat flies. Which is, not at all. Scuttle-hopping is more like it. Baby got bat.

Mirabel, I got some 'splainin' to do. First, I'm sorry I got you into this mess. I thought I was helping you girls.
Second, I'm going to fix it. First, we'll get you a tent. A beautiful Wenzel Zephyr 9 x 13' screen house. 
Whose most important feature is the "welded polyethelene floor" (see Mirabel's substrate, above) which is integral to the walls and will prevent you and sister Stella from escaping while you attend Bat Boot Camp with Mether.

Bat Boot Camp? What's that??

Sounds eeky (says Mirabel as she hangs inches from the floor).

Well, it's where Mether picks you up and tosses your fat little bodies into the air every evening, and she cuts your mealworm consumption by oh, 90% until you lose the extra baggage and are airborne again.

We'll install you in the tent and you can get out and fly whenever you feel like it.

Stella: We don't feel like it, thank you.

Oh, you will. You will. Or I'm going to die trying.

If you do a little math, bringing a bat down from 26 gm to 18 gm is like asking me to get down to about 97 pounds in 4 weeks. I beg of you, don't do the math.

 Some said it couldn't be done, but I owed it to my girls, and I was going to give it one heck of a try. On the bats. Not me. I would need my Tahitian Vanilla Talenti Gelato to fortify me for the work ahead.

Stella Arrives!

I'd only had Mirabel for a few days when I got a Facebook message from our friend John in Marietta. It seems a bat had found its way into a bedroom and, after vacating the room, John returned in the morning to capture it. He didn't want to just put it outside as it was in the 30's, and he figured I'd know what to do.

I asked John to put it in a tight container with airflow, to put some soft cloth in with it for it to hide in, and to deliver it to Bill at Bird Watcher's Digest. Then called Bill to let him know there was a bat incoming.

And this was my first look at Stella Battista. Oh my darling, let me free you from that jar.

Clinging to a pair of black panties she was, a beautiful little gem of a bat. Quick check: a female. Now, once I put them together, how would I ever tell her from Mirabel Battista?

Well, Stella's a blonde! Where Mirabel has a black face and arms and ears, Stella's are pink. And Stella's fur is ever so much lighter, honey to Mirabel's mahogany.  Here's dark little Mirabel:

And here's Stella, the impetuous blonde. She's got a pretty set of batlips on her, don't she?

In the top photo, note Mirabel's robust claw, which is actually the nail of her first finger. Very important claw for clinging and locomotion.  Stella's claws were worn to  nubs and a little bloody, telling me that she might have been caught and struggling for some time, perhaps scrabbling against a plaster wall? Enough to wear those vital claws all the way down. Not good. She'd need time and rest and food to regrow the nails.

While Mirabel is self-feeding, it's not clear that Stella has the hang of it yet. Since bats eat in the still of the night, it's difficult to catch them at it. So the mealworms may disappear, but when you have two to worry about, you can't be sure that one bat isn't getting the whole load. They can be amazingly piggish, presented with a bowl full of mealworms. I'm talking fifty a night! I let it go for a few days, figuring that both were eating, but my gram scale told the story. Stella was losing weight, and Mirabel was gaining. So I started hand-feeding Stella again. After four days, I got them both to 20 grams, which is right where they should be for hibernating.

Feeding Stella is a pleasure. See those little worn-off claw nubs? Poor girl. She has a hard time climbing.

Stella was so hungry at her first hand-feeding after the three days she'd been fasting that if I didn't get a mealworm to her quickly enough she'd gnaw my glove!! Yipes!! Note to self: Buy new gloves. These are a bit beat, a little thin around the edges. I like West Country gloves the best for handling bats. Very pliable but also thick and protective.

Here's my little blonde beauty, all fed up and ready to scuttle back under her towel and cuddle with her new BFF, Mirabel.  They play Batty Stacky.

As I write, from a hotel room in New York, Bill's just taken the bats out to the detached, unheated garage to wait out my two-week trip to South Africa. Before taking that step, I did some calling around and got good information from the Organization for Bat Conservation, in the person of my friend, the dynamic and creative Rob Mies. 

Although the Ohio Wildlife Center had advised me that once a bat is warmed up and eating, it should be kept that way until the weather warms in spring, I got to thinking about that, and wondered if it was the right thing to do. Talking with Rob confirmed my suspicion that bats come in and out of torpor throughout the winter. According to Rob, bats hibernating as far north as Alberta come out and fly around in five degree weather! Grabbing a drink, changing roosts...nobody really knows. And these are healthy bats, not touched by white-nose syndrome, which is notorious for forcing bats out to forage in subfreezing temperatures.

Rob told me that he has sources dating back to the early 20th century documenting bat hibernation in captivity. Some people kept them all winter in cold temperatures without feeding them at all; some took them out once a month and fed and watered them, then put them back. And it struck me that there was no reason two bats in good weight couldn't go out in their screened tank to our unheated garage for a couple of weeks, where they'd be sheltered, but at a natural ambient temperature. One where they wouldn't need food. Because nobody handles bats in our house except me, because I'm the only one with the rabies shots. So either these bats were going to hibernate while I was gone, or they'd have to go to OWC. I picked A. Hibernate.

So I fed them up to the last minute and then, after a cold snap had passed, Bill cracked the window in their aviary open to let them cool down slowly, then transferred them to the garage. He left a bunch of mealworms and some water just in case. I'm eager to peel back the towels when I get home and see my little beauties. I'm thinking they'll be just fine, as nature intended. 

And they were. Both had been eating and drinking out in the garage while I was gone, and Bill put fresh food and water in as it disappeared. (The bats stay under their towel when you take the lid off the tank). Both were weighing in around 18 grams, just perfect for a hibernating big brown. I was elated that we'd found a natural way to keep them at more normal ambient temperatures, with food and water available as needed. They didn't eat as much as they did when they were all warmed up, but that's probably better for them in the long run. And man, were they frisky when I took them out to check on them, flapping their wings and trying to fly. 

South Africa was great. I just need time and world enough to edit fifty gazillion photos...kind of a busy spring around here.

Bat Cuteness, Extreme

Warning. Extreme bat cuteness to follow. Those who think they don't like bats especially need to watch this.  

In this little video, Mirabel is on her eighth large mealworm and she's getting full. Bats get this look on their face when they're satiated; they kind of settle back into themselves and that little pointed pink tongue lances out and they lick their chops. When the chop-licking starts, they're done.

I love this video because it really captures how sweet bats are, and it also captures their Marlena Dietrich-like need to be alone. They like darkness and seek it out. Prepare for the cuteness!

There is a very cool thing that happens in this video (aside from all the muzzlepuff licking) that I'm thrilled to have captured. I've noticed that when bats decide to change location, they literally turn on their radar. You can hear Mirabel do this when she raises her head and looks around at 1:35 in the video. Turn up the sound on your computer and listen for a low thrumming sound--that's Mirabel. I don't know if she's echolocating, but she's definitely sending out pulses, and it is most likely to help her orient as she crawls under the towel. Bats. What we don't know about them fills volumes.

Mirabel is by far the nicest bat I've cared for. She's quiet and docile and self-feeding; she doesn't cuss and gnash her teeth or musk me at all. She seems to know she's got it good, having been rescued from an inappropriate perch in a shopping center parking lot.

Here's the setup: a 20 gal. long tank with nonskid drawer liner taped to its sides. Fresh water and mealworms available at all times in low, bat-friendly bowls. After these photos were taken I had to tape every single gap in the drawer liner because Mirabel kept crawling in between the liner and the glass. You don't want them to be able to contact any glass at all, because they can break their fingertips if they beat their wings against it.

As you can see in the video, Mirabel is so tractable that I can let her rest on a towel while I service her tank.  I have the ideal place to keep her: Charlie's aviary, which I keep closed with sliding glass doors, so there will be no bat escapes! 

Creature love comes in many forms. It feels good to have someone to care for in that room again.

Soon, there would be another! Bats seem to come in twos. At least for me!

Mirabel the Bat

Thanks to Phoebe Thompson, videographer, for her camera work and for loving bats, too.

It has been a blessed winter. After all the stuff I went through two years ago with Darryl and Dee Dee, and getting my rabies vaccinations so I could help bats, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get any more to rehabilitate. I shouldn't have worried. Marietta is a batty little city.

And this is a tough winter for bats, because the mild weather finds them out and active when there are very few moths and flying insects for them to eat.

So it was that this little bat found herself clinging to a brick pillar in a shopping center breezeway in the middle of Marietta. Which wouldn't have been bad, since people said they'd seen other bats clinging to the pillars before, but this bat was only a foot off the ground, and she hadn't moved in over a week. I got a Facebook message from our friend Kimy, a former employee of Bird Watcher's Digest, who now works at a business in the shopping center. She was worried about the bat.

I guessed from her location that the bat had gotten grounded, perhaps too weak to fly, and had crawled to the nearest vertical pillar to hang herself up. If she'd burned her fat reserves on a mild night fruitlessly looking for food, her prospects for living through the winter in such a cold place were pretty bad. She was in torpor, but without fuel.

Mirabel, safe at home in her tank.

So I worked her into my schedule that afternoon, and went to pick her up. I took mealworms and water and my gloves and a critter carrier. 

It was amazing to see the awareness spread through the businesses in the shopping center that a bat rescue was in progress. Five women came out on the sidewalk to watch. And there wasn't a "ewww" or an "eek" coming from any of them. They were solicitous and concerned, and I thought to myself, well, the times they are a-changin' for bats. Maybe all the news about white nose syndrome, which is killing bats by the millions, makes people a little more sympathetic toward the little animals than they  might otherwise be. But maybe I was just seeing the best in these women, and it's always there, whether we see it or not. Maybe seeing someone who was so thrilled to come pick up a bat in peril had something to do with it. Say what you will about wildlife rehab (some argue that because it makes no difference on a population level it's pointless) seeing it in action has a powerful effect on people, and that can only be good.

I stopped to wonder, too, about The Natural View, a tabloid nature supplement that my mother-in-law, Elsa Thompson; Marilyn Ortt, our hometown natural history hero; and designer Claire Mullen of Bird Watcher's Digest put together once a year. Marilyn always asks me to write and paint something for the cover story, and two years ago, my piece was about Darryl and Dee Dee, the bat story. And several of those women remembered that. I'm a little bemused that the majority of people in my town know my work only from that once-a-year newspaper article. That's OK. Over time, Marilyn and I have made it our plan to feature creatures who suffer from bad press. Bats. Snakes. Coming up, chimney swifts. Creatures who desperately need our help but are helpless to ask for it, who often see the worst in us.

This day, I saw the best. And I got to take a bat home and nurse her back to good weight and good health. A privilege and an honor. Thanks, Kimy.

That's what you want to see. Processed mealworms.  

 Mimi Hart, chanteuse extraordinaire, this one's for you, kid. And for Bobby.