It was July, and the first baby bat that I ever rescued was about 7 days old, from my estimation. His eyes weren’t yet open, he had little “milk-teeth”, he was hairless and pale, with had a purple-greyish cast to his skin. The gentleman who located me on the internet under a search for “bat rehabbers in Wisconsin” said that the little bat had fallen out of the bat maternity colony in his clay roof tiles. I brought a port-o-bat with a warming disc and cloths to place him in for the trip home. He needed feeding and bats must be warm in order to feed them, or they can’t absorb the meal properly, and the milk can sour or bloat in their stomachs, causing death.I named him Winthrop, after the street name where I picked him up. Winthrop immediately began being fed milk replacement about 7 times a day for a week or so, after which it tapered down over the next few weeks to once a day, filling in another meal with decapitated meal worms. Feeding baby bats milk replacement is quite time consuming and each meal, in the beginning, took about 45 minutes. Obviously, we spent many hours together, deeply bonding, since he was missing anyone able to truly care for him.
As Winthrop grew and was eating only meal worms, our feeding times turned game-like for the tiny Big Brown bat. Like all young children, young bats play as well. Winthrop began to anticipate the zipper of the mesh crate I kept him in being opened, and he liked to follow the zipper. We played this game each time I needed to feed or water him…I ran my fingernail along the zipper to make him think it was being opened. He ran along it, chasing my fingernail, and I was able to safely open the zipper behind him. I placed my arm in the crate, he jumped onto it and ran up my arm, hungrily waiting for hand fed worms, eating up to 35 a night.
As Winthrop grew and Spring approached, I knew he’d be a candidate for release after May 15th. I started teaching him to fly in the flight cage. We’d have a couple of lessons a night and as his wings got stronger, and he sustained flight longer, I knew he’d be able to be a real bat soon, free and outside. We still played games every night and he was moved into the larger cage where he could fly at will, with all the older boys. By then his routine was to greet me when I walked into the cage by flying to my shoulder, and climbing in my hair, where he would hang next to my ear, and chirp in his happy little bat way… That was so special to me. I still made sure he ate enough nightly and he was doing amazingly well with all his training.
May 15th came and he was moved to the outside, secure flight cage to see if he would catch insects on his own…He never figured that out, unfortunately, even with the guidance of other wild bats that I had “wintered-over”….Winthrop was unreleasable simply because he wouldn’t be able to find food for himself. My heart sank for him because he could never be freed. He was, however, happy, in the world that he’d grown accustomed to, having never known another…
