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Friday cat blogging, blood sport edition

I woke up last night when the whir of the box fan was joined by a high chittering noise. Again. I could hear Iz in hot pursuit, so this time I had a pretty good idea what was going on. As I closed the bedroom door, I picked up an empty recycling bin as a potential holding pen.

It took a few passes to locate Iz. Our apartment has a staircase down to the second floor, ending at a door about an inch and a half from the edge of the last step. Iz loses toys into the gap between the door and the stair-tread all the time. Following the curious mews, I found him down there, fishing in the gap. Cautiously, I opened the door, and found a bat, wings furled, huddled in the bottom corner of the door-frame. Mark up number two for the Iz; he might not have caught this one, but he certainly cornered it. (Continued…)

At first, I was concerned that the bat was dead, but when Iz sidled up and tapped it, it glared back at him. I left him to keep the bat cornered, and went back to the apartment for a small trash can and my camera. I tried snapping a shot or two of the bat, but for some reason, the camera wouldn’t focus on it.

Izzy's bat

Then I dropped the trash can over it. When I slid a Delorme Atlas (Pennsylvania, as it happens) under the can, the bat started flopping around inside its new pen, so I knew it was doing fine. I put Iz back in the apartment and shut the door (inconveniently locking myself out,) then took the whole stack out to the porch and released the bat. This time, I saw it fly off. Hopefully, it spent the rest of the night hoovering up mosquitoes in gratitude for its rescue.

Bat, contained Moveable bat-trap

I’ve started referring to Iz’s food as “leftover bat,” though. And I fell asleep wondering if, despite not killing either of his conquests, he would be considered to have a good batting average. (Ouch.)

To top things off, the present-wrapping picture made another message board appearance. Be careful with that link; it’s not inherently not-safe-for-work, but some of the associated images are pretty tasteless. (Iz easily outclasses every other image on the page.)

Now Playing: Dan Takes Five from In the Land of Salvation and Sin by The Georgia Satellites

Posted by pjm on July 1, 2005 10:28 AM |

Comments

A bat that can’t be photographed? Did you check to see if it had a reflection in a mirror?

Izzie Van Helsing?

(And the irony of using the map from spooky penn-sylvania)

Posted by: Anonymous | July 1, 2005 11:42 AM

Sounds like an exciting night. Is he finding these bats inside the apartment? Scary.

Posted by: stag | July 1, 2005 12:21 PM

I’m not sure where the bats are coming from. For a while I thought they were finding loose screens, but that doesn’t look likely. Maybe there’s a route in through “the garrett,” a sort-of attic attached to our apartment, but with less than two months remaining in the unit, it’s not really my top priority unless it starts happening nightly.

Posted by: pjm | July 1, 2005 7:43 PM

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