Tuesday, July 19, 2011

One Batty Idea

Today was a strange day. We were out filming the bats and as usual, I had to go in for a bathroom break. When I came back out I kept hearing noises. I thought it was just the bats in the cave but when I turned my head I saw a tiny baby bat face down in the dirt. We have no idea how he got there and he had ants crawling all over him. So, I picked him up and called for Ambre to come help. This is the second time we have encountered this problem so once again, we decided that the best thing to do would be to put him back in the cave. Ambre went in to do it and temporarily scared all of the bats away but still managed to get the baby to grab on to the wall. I made sure to keep an eye on him but it didn't even take five minutes for him to fall again. By this time I was sure he wouldn't be alive but I ran to check, just in case. Sure enough, he was laying there squeaking for help. After surviving two falls I couldn't bring myself to put him back again so Ambre filled the role of babysitter while I went to do some extensive googling. Information on bat rehabilitation is not an easy thing to find so we weren't exactly sure what to do. Regardless, off to the store I went hoping to find some goat's milk. I had no such luck and instead came back with baby formula, regular cow milk, a paintbrush, two towels, and a washcloth. We did our best to feed the bat with the paintbrush but it proved to be a challenge. Afterwards, we flipped a table upside down and draped a towel over it to make a bat hammock for him to sleep in. We are hoping for the best but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Take a look, we have named him Sampson.



7 comments:

  1. I did work with bats at the wildlife center during my internship and this is the exact same thing we did with them (only we had better equipment there) so hopefully this all gives Sampson a fighting chance. No matter what it's better than putting him back on the wall to fall and die or get eaten by a crow....

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  2. Well, I believe you're doing the right thing. You should reach out to the Wildlife Center to see if they can give you any other pointers.

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  3. Ambre you should reach out to the Wildlife center, it could be good for them and your Bat project. Hands across the ocean so to speak.
    The Bat is adorable. I've been working on some New Bat drawings.
    HUgs
    Grammy

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  4. Just to update everyone - I emailed Amanda at the Wildlife Center of Virginia where I did my rehabilitation internship to see what advice they might have. Their normal protocol is to just tell everyone to put the animal back, but given the unusual nature of this situation I'm hoping that is not all they advise me to do. I will let you know what they say once I hear back from them.

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  5. Grammy - that is fantastic. Norma really really liked your artwork on the blog. She really enjoys crafts so you guys have that in common. I am going to email both of you and introduce you to each other so you can talk - I know Norma was very interested in hiring you to do some artwork for the conservation foundation! She also said she would love for you to visit - you would be her special guest :)

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  6. Did Amanda reply? What were their recommendations?

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  7. I emailed the WCV and Amanda responded ASAP. She was impressed by how much I remembered, but said that I had it all correct. They don't deal with fruit bats so she couldn't give me specifics. She gave me links to some really useful sites though. Dr. Sherwin looked at some pix of Sampson and estimates that he's about 3 weeks old.

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