RE: Living in Luxury Off The Grid - There’s Bats in our Belfry!
Wow, what a story. Were you worried about the bite? I think bats carry rabies in the USA don't they?
We once had a bat in our old 300 year old house on the Cape. As it is a true old Cape the second floor is really the attic and it is a finished floor of the house, but not sure how or why the bat got in but it was clinging to the ceiling by the chimney that is freestanding and runs inside the house. They always had them inside to keep all the heat produced from the fires.
When we saved him we weren't sure what to do with him. We were gonna call the animal shelter but then let him go a bit down the road in a great old cemetery, I guess we thought, 'bat, ghost, halloween, cemetery'. We only had the one though, but I think it was the first so it couldn't tell it's fellow bats and we never figured out how it got in.
Down the road was probably a really safe place to release your bat. Anywhere close to it's territory would be good. You can rest assured that you saved him! When we began having trouble I did a lot of research and once bats find a place they like it's really hard to get rid of them. They like their territories!
Rabies are like the flu - either everyone has it or no one has it. Western Washington has had only a couple cases in a very long time so I wasn't worried especially when I discovered the pup and realized that the mother undoubtedly thought it was justified! We were quite worried about how to deal with the pup and we called the vet for advice. When they learned that we knew where the bats were holing up they figured that there would be no probs with the mom finding it again. The little thing was squeaking for all it was worth. I'm glad we had the hot water bottle though. I think that bats are maybe a bit sensitive to cold.
In retrospect, though we had a lot of clean up in the attic, it was kind of a fun/interesting experience. I expect I wouldn't have thought so if we hadn't won back our attic!