Bats at The Beeches

Continued from yesterday!

Last night at 10.30pm I put the baby bat outside, clinging to a warm towel and hanging about 6 feet from the ground in a specially made open box.

Almost immediately there was an adult bat flying around in my house. Surely this must be the mother??

I opened the front door and closed all the other doors downstairs, hoping it would go out quickly. No joy. I went upstairs to close the doors there, but it flew ahead of me and encountered Daisy on the landing. In one acrobatic leap she had the bat. I shouted at her and she disappeared. I could not find her and she had run outside.

I thought that was the end of the adult bat.

I went to bed, very tired from two days of walking and fell fast asleep. This morning the baby had gone, so I assumed it must have died.

Then I saw an adult bat roosting behind Mum's curtain rail. It went into the box and I took it to Tina, our village bat expert. She said it was a lactating female. She also said that she thought the baby had been rescued last night because none of the previous rescues have fallen off the towel arrangement before.

Here is the adult female, objecting to being held. She is about to be fed. Tina will have fed her all day and will bring her here tonight after dusk to release her. 

As you know, bats are protected. Tina has a licence to handle them.

I hope this is the end of the saga!

In other news, the large, heavy shower door half fell off Mum's shower as she was about to go in this morning. A radiator was leaking upstairs. Wesley, the wonderful plumber, came this afternoon to fix things.

I managed to watch Helen McCrory in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea from the National Theatre this afternoon. It was available only until 7pm and I was relieved when it continued to show until 7.20pm and I saw the end. Lots of expressed emotion and angst!