Snug Slug Activities

Living in a 160-year-old house is no picnic. When we first moved in we were greeted by a dead bat on the windowsill; a grim omen of what we would experience for the past twenty years.

At the start we had bats flying around inside the house on a weekly basis. It was such a big problem that, despite the fact they’re a protected species, we often had to resort to catching and killing them. This did little to stem the tide.

A few fun facts we’ve learned about bats since moving into that house:

One- On average, brown bats live about 7-8 years, but they can live up to 30 years in the wild. If you have bats living in your house, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

Two- In the winter they enter a state called “torpor” which helps them conserve energy and survive colder temperatures. In torpor a bat’s heartrate will decrease from about 210 beats per minute to about 8 beats per minute. This allows their body to cool so that they are not expending energy trying to regulate their body temperature. Torpor may also extend to become hibernation, with some bats hibernating for up to 90 days at a time.

Three- Bats are social creatures, roosting in colonies for a large portion of the year. In the winter, bats will roost together to hibernate. In the spring and summer, pregnant females will roost together in “maternity colonies” (basically a giant mom group) while the males and non-pregnant females roost alone or in smaller groups.

Four- Little Brown Bats are an endangered species. While they have very few predators (a lot of other animals think they taste bad), they are very susceptible to a disease called “White-nose Syndrome”. This is a fungal infection that was first identified in 2006, and has since killed millions of bats, in some areas killing off as much as 90% of wild populations.

In 2008 my youngest brother was born. This was a wonderful thing, but stressful. He was born premature by about three and a half months, so when he finally came home from the hospital he was hooked up to monitors, oxygen tanks, feeding tubes, and all sorts of fun things. Unfortunately, this meant that when bats suddenly appeared in the house, it was almost impossible to pick up the newborn and take him to safety while the bat was dealt with.

So what did we do? After a couple months of research and begging, our father finally said that we could get a cat. One cat, and only if it caught the bats.

We gave him two kittens for his birthday.

Our bat problem was finally in check. One of the kittens, named Algernon (Algie for short), was a fierce hunter. The other kitten, named Guess, was a delight, but sadly we lost her after only a couple of years.

Algie protected the house for years, and we would see bats maybe once or twice a year instead of once or twice a week. But all good things come to an end so they say. Not to worry, Algie is doing just fine, but at 17 years-old he would rather lounge around yelling at Hamlet than hunt anything.

So the bats are back. Not to the volume we had them before, but more than we want. I spent far too long the other night crawling around on the floor duct-taping the cracks under the baseboards to keep them out.

The house isn’t in good enough condition for us to bother trying to fix it, much less pay for pest control. At this point we just want to keep it standing long enough to pay off the mortgage and find a new house. The goal is three years, but who knows what’ll happen.

In the meantime, we fall asleep to the not very soothing chirps and squeaks of the North American Brown Bat.