Bats, Bats, Bats

This is the bat peeking over the top of the corner cabinet in the dining room.
Linus was laughing so hard at the shenanigans, his face turned pink.
Matthew used some of my quilt fabric to catch a couple of the bats.

Here is the bat that crawled out of the vent right in front of us.

The big news in our household is that we've been entertaining bat refugees.  We had work done on our chimney last Friday and the chimney guy ended up closing the exit for a colony of bats.  Starting that evening, we had bats flying around the dining and living rooms.  We gently and respectfully herded them out the front door.  By Sunday night, I was tired from canning all weekend and the bats weren't such a novelty any more. I just wanted to relax; but, we were on bat duty again.  Before it got dark Matthew and Linus put aluminum foil over the edges of the fireplace insert, the heating vents, and heat air intakes.  As dusk settled over us we sat in different parts of the room and waited silently.  Almost immediately we could hear a bat walking on metal.  Next think we knew, Linus and I saw a bat crawl out of the air intake we were watching.  That gave us some useful information to tell the bat expert.

To make a long, dramatic story much shorter and to the point, here is the summary:

*I called the Urban Wildlife Rescue who gave me advice over the phone.

*The chimney guy came back and took off everything on the top of the chimney so bats could get in and out freely.  Bat guy told me that they will all be gone to hibernate by the middle of October and then we can cover up the chimney again.

*We learned that bats here are larger than the ones in Wisconsin.  

*I think the bats were fortunate to have us to deal with because we advocated on their behalf and treated them as respectfully as we could.

*Linus knows a lot more about bats now and he even told the chimney guy, "Bats are nocturnal. Owls are nocturnal."  The chimney guy understood him completely and was very impressed.

*Linus told me he wants to be a chimney guy because he would drive a truck, have ladders, wear boots, and get to use tools.  This is the first time he told me he wanted to be someone.

Linus misses the bats.  He played a game earlier this week of pretending to catch bats. He'd run around the house with a quilt, pretend to drop the bat into a paper grocery bag, then had me open the front door and he'd let it go. Oh, he also had me pet these imaginary bats, which I only agreed to do if he understood they were pretend.  We've talked to him a number of times about not touching bats.