So You Think You'd Like to Rehab Bats...

Rehabbing bats is really rewarding and interesting. You meet new people from many different walks of life, and you have the opportunity to save bats' lives. The first step is learning what the rehabbing laws are in your state and becoming a member of any local rehabbing groups, so that you gain knowledge from other rehabbers, as well as getting them to know you and trust you. That helps immensely when people are releasing animals to you. Word of mouth is a postive thing.

The next step is to locate the clinic or doctor's office from which you'll be getting your rabies innoculations. Not every family doctor will write a prescription for them. Often, you'll be going to a clinic that gives injections for travellers. The shots are never covered by insurance since insurance companies view this as "recreational" or "leisure" activities. Funny thing is, if you were to actually contract rabies, from not being innoculated, their bill could be around a million dollars-worst case scenario-, instead of $600-$1000. Not a good trade-off in my opinion, but hey, I am not an insurance company. The father of Gina Geise, a local Wisconsin resident, who contracted rabies a few years ago from handling a bat with her bare hands, stated that her medical bills were upwards of a million dollars...But she lived, and most people don't.

So, be prepared to shell out your own money. The injections are staggered in time, but must ALWAYS be given intramuscular. Only in the upper arm, never in the glut, as there is too much fatty tissue in the glut, and hitting a muscle there is not an easy task. There was recently also a major shortage with rabies vaccines. The CDC has all the guidelines updated, as needed, on levels of rabies vaccines that are available to rehabbers for pre-exposure, boosters, etc, as well as post-exposure vaccines to those having been in contact with rabies vector animals.

More Bat Photos

Wisconsin Bats

Here in Wisconsin we have several different types of bats. We have the Big Brown. There's also the Hoary, the Northern Long Ear, LIttle Brown, Pipistrelle, Silver Hair, Red, and Indiana. The Indiana bat is an endangered species, rarely seen in Wisconsin.

Red bats, Hoary Bats, and Silver Hairs are foliage roosting bats. Little Browns, Big Browns, Northern Long Ears are crevice dwelling bats. The bat in this photo is a baby Big Brown bat, about 2 weeks old.

The Boys

In the bigger cage I have "The Boys". As I mentioned before, I pretty much solely keep the boys, and the Madison rehabbers keep the girls. These bats I term "The Boys" include some of my first bats that I ever got in for rehabbing, and include others that I got more recently.

Vleer, Vicious, Abe, and Bale are in the 6'x4'x6' cage. Maybe that's silly since they can't fly, but I like to give them room. Boys don't always get along together, since they normally don't form colonies, so I try to give them space,. After all, they are here for the rest of their lives. They were fighting at times and more space is better. Ledger was in there as well, however, sadly, he died a few weeks ago. I opened up the cage to feed them and he was face-down, in one of the 3 water dishes. He and Bale came in together in October of 2008. They were friends and were together the most. Now Bale has reformed alliances and is always huddled with the others in the cage.

One never knows exactly what happened to cause a bat's death, unless there is some obvious trauma, like a cat mauling, or broken wing due to a shutter injury. Some die of old age, some of intestinal blockage, some of pesticide poisoning. It is very unlikely that he just drowned, though.

Sweet Potato

The evening before Thanksgiving this year I received a call about a found bat. It had been hanging on a window perimeter for a couple of days. The people at the company were hoping it would fly away. My husband picked up the bat and upon his return home, I discovered the bat was a Red Bat. Red bats are foliage roosters, unlike Big Browns, who are crevice dwellers. Those are the types of bats we have in Wisconsin. The bats here are also all insectivorous, meaning they only eat insects.

Female crevice dwellers colonize, but no foliage roosters do. This little bat was used to being alone, but she was obviously either greatly off course, based on the season and her location, or she never figured out where she was supposed to fly. In the Fall, foliage roosters in Wisconsin generally migrate and hibernate.

I discovered the new bat was a female, so I named her Sweet Potato, in honor of Thanksgiving. She is 100% releasable. Feeding her almost 40 worms daily, by hand is tiring, at best. However, totally worth it. She and I have become buddies, but there is a sense of her returning to being wilder now, which is good. Since Thanksgiving she had never figured out how to eat alone, until the last few days. I still give her water manually, to be sure that she’s getting enough.

Winthrop- My First Baby Bat

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…

Getting Our First Bats

After moving to Milwaukee and getting settled in here, I reconnected with the Madison bat rehabbers. The rehabber they worked with previously in Milwaukee, had recently moved to Minnesota. Soon I was also volunteering in the Wisconsin Humane Society's wildlife rehab facility and eventually started caring for some non-releaseable bats at home.

All the things I was working toward were falling into place. I always name the bats I receive and the first non-releasable, educational bats were Vleer and Vesper. Soon after I picked up Vicious, appropriately named, at that time. After several years, and complete healing from his near fatal compound wing fracture, he's one of the sweetest bats in my care.

The agreement is that I care for non-releasable male bats and the Madison rehabbers keep the females, which prevents unplanned baby bats. Since Big Brown bats can live up to 30 years in captivity, there would be the potential for one pup a year from the females, if they were not segregated based on gender. The most common bats in Wisconsin are the Big Browns, followed by Little Browns. In addition to those we have these other bats: Hoary, Red, Silver Hair, Eastern Pipistrelle, and the Northern Long Ear.

Even though I had been through an intensive course, as with everything, there was a learning curve. I am still learning about the bats to this day, and every night when I feed them, medicated the ones in need, and clean their housing, I remember why I do it; to help all that I can, realizing that I can't save every one, but their chances are much better with me, and others like me, trying to help them one by one.