winged friend update

We waited an hour and then used a mirror shoved under the door to see if the bat was still flying around. He wasn't. So we entered and examined the room for a hanging bat. No indication. Great! We have saved a bat and allowed him to continue on in his bug-eating ways.

Five minutes after we went back to bed, he appears out of nowhere. This time, he escapes the bedroom before we have a chance to capture him and whizzes through the house. Eventually, Sam traps him on our screened in porch, where he flies back and forth, reminding me of the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo bat exhibit. I was always fascinated by the fact that the bats were only separated from the viewers by a series of thin wires strung at half inch intervals.

Anyway, Sam and I usually do not like to harm or injure things, but there was very little we could do to get the bat out of the house without causing some damage. Plus, it was 6am and we were cranky and tired, so we gave up and went the slightly less humane route. Sam swung at it with a tennis racket. It only took a few tries and he connected, rocketing the bat with such force that it broke through the screen and finally, out of our lives.

I checked outside this morning, and there was no bat corpse outside, so I'm being optimistic about his survival.