Bits on Bats 4: A Chiropteran comes to Congress

If you've read my earlier post - Bits on Bats 2 - you'll be familiar with the size of a pipistrelle.  Over the years I have been called out many times to deal with bats that end up inside houses and other buildings and then can't find their way out. The responses of apparently rational human beings who find a bat flying round their room can be astonishing.  In one case I attended after a frantic call to the police was routed my way, I rang the door bell and this Giant Haystack of a man answered the door, white as a sheet.  He took me into his living room and showed me the bat.  It was on his hearth and was not well.   Worse- it was dead - a pip well and truly squeaked.  Eventually he confided in me that he had panicked and when the bat landed on the brick chimney breast, he wacked it with a full size builder's shovel.  This man, who looked like he could bend iron bars with his teeth had been reduced to a quivering wreck by an inch long pipistrelle.

I have tried all sorts of techniques to remove bats from inside buildings but, thanks to a brilliant piece of film going round the internet at the moment, I now realise where I've been going wrong. What you need to do is convene a committee and have a heated debate.

Tune in here if you missed the day the bat came to congress.