Have you ever caught a bat? When a king pipistrelles started to alarm my human on Monday night by zooming around her bedroom, I naturally leaped to her rescue, thinking that those black wing bits might be quite tasty. I finally got the pesky thing last night and was disappointed to find that it was quite unpalatable, so I left the evidence to show my human I’d tried and helped myself to a young rabbit instead. My human was impressed, as she should have been, but two things about her reaction worry me. She is muttering about worming tablets, but it is not long since her last visit to the vet for these stupid pills and I worry that I may become ill if she worms me too often. And she seemed confused about which recycling bin to use for the dead bat. Here in South Oxfordshire we have a wide choice – recyclables, land-fill or food waste are the most popular. The latter seems to obvious choice to me.
And one last question. Why was the bat indoors anyway? The colony lives somewhere in the roof space and normally flies out over the garden without any confusion. Were they trying to stay out of the rain? What do you advise?
Yours ever,
Scaramouche.
Dear Scaramouche,
Bats... mmmm. You are just one lucky cat, Scaramouche. I have to catch mice in the garden and bring them into the house, when I want an interesting game at 3 am in the morning. You've got a colony of bats waiting for you in the roof space somewhere. Hours of fun .... stalking them, climbing into the attic, poking your whiskers into various spaces in the rafters etc.
You could catch one and release it into your human's bedroom. If you are careful not to hurt its wings, it will then zoom round the room. That should give you and her hours of enjoyment. Wait for her shrieks of delight. Or just have fun of placing yourself on a wall and batting them as they come out in the twilight. Biff Baff. Another bat hits the dust.
I have never caught one but I thought they were just mice with wings. I'm surprised they don't taste good. I would have thought they were a nice crunchy meal. I can see the wings would be too tough to eat, but I would have thought the plump little bodies were quite tasty. Or perhaps because they eat insects, they taste vile - like shrews do. I catch shrews all the time but I never eat them.
Some humans, particularly naturalists (so called) get very upset by our tendency to catch bats. Bats have more friends among humans than ordinary mice or shrews. Not sure why. There are little groups of humans all over the country trying to save bats from other humans and from cats like you.
Humans are terribly hypocrites. Bats are endangered species because humans persecute them. Admittedly we take a few of them - but nothing like the numbers killed by humans using chemicals in their lofts or blocking entry into their rooftops. Even churches often try to kill them.
I envy you. I do.
Yours
George.
PS. We look so alike we could almost be brothers. Humans reading this can get bat information at www.bats.org.uk