Batty Occurence...

It's a bit of a rubbish image I know, especially for someone who used to take photographs for a living at one time.

Anyway, here's the story from last night and how I came to take the image of this little Pipistrelle Bat in the darkness of my log store...

Last thing I do every night before heading to bed is to take my two Bernese Mountain Dogs 'Ioan and Argo' out for a short walk. Outside we have water for them, which I always change before heading up the wooden hills. As I went to the water, I saw something in the dim light swimming, almost fish like. To my surprise it was a bat, definitely at the point of drowning - it had obviously been in the water for a good few minutes and was exhausted.  It was so fortuitous I happened to go out at the time I did as, had I not, I imagine I would have found the creature dead the following morning. Without hesitation, I fished it out with a flat piece of wood and for a short time it lay almost motionless, but I could see the creature taking breaths, so knew it had a chance.

Looking online I saw it was a Pipistrelle Bat, one of Britain's most common bats, but all the same a protected animal.

I really hadn't a clue what to do, but I knew I had to do something, the bat's fur was sodden with cold water and it looked extremely cold.  I quickly looked up information from the Bat Conservation Trust and even spoke to our on call vet on the phone. I was told not to touch the creature by 'unprotected hand,' which I hadn't... I sort of knew not to do that from things I'd read in the past.  It was suggested to take the animal to a place higher up, from where, if it recovered, it cold fly away. Due to the lateness of the hour, I was told to keep the bat overnight and if it was still alive in the morning I should take it to the vet surgery.

I took it to a covered area where we keep our logs for the fire and laid it down on the highest most log, but I just knew it wouldn't survive without some immediate support.  What to do?

The course of action I decided to take was to get a hair drier on a low but warm setting and dry off the creature as it lay on the logs. As I dried it out, to my surprise it slowly began to recover and moved around on the log, eventually settling in a bat like hanging position, which is the point I decided to leave it alone in the darkness of the open log store.

I had a cup of tea indoors and waited for a good half hour before retuning to check whether it was still alive or not.  To my surprise the bat had flown away, apparently recovered from its impromptu swim.

Good deed done!

#bats #pipistrellebat #pipistrelle #gooddeed