I found a bat while out on my evening walk tonight. It’s tiny, and seems to have a broken wing. It left a little smudge of blood when I carried it home in the palm of my hand. Poor little bugger. Is he a goner? Are these things fixable?
He seemed almost dead when I picked him up, but as we got home he started struggling and trying to bite through my finger. He’s now sleeping with his head stuck in the corner or a cardboard box and feet in the air. What do I do when/if he wakes up?
Go to the wet market-Buy collared greens or kale
Go to a pet shop that sell crickets and buy about 10 with a plastic cage
Feed the greens to the crickets then feed the crickets to the bat and do a google search. I’d also suggest something about the myriad mites and fleas they carry. I love bats and would hate to see anything happen to the little guy.
PS that’s why I really hate windmills besides the fact that they aren’t economical.
Stray Dog has experience rescuing bats.
And he doesn’t mean old ladies either…
Yeah, I was in bat rescue for a couple of years back in old blighty.
Give me a call: 0920 620 109. I live near you.
He’ll need mealworms for now to eat, and I’ll send photos of the wing damage to experts online while seeing if the zoo vet can help with his injury in the meantime.
Be happy to.
Now I have to make a bloody bat box . . .
oh CUUUUTEEEE!!! IF I didn’t have curly hair I would have a house full of bats.
Well, Mr Funk500 got a message to Loretta to call me, but nothing so far.
If you’re reading this, L, keep the bat in a box, but provide something he can hang onto (wooden wall to the box is preferable) as well as something he can hide behind while hanging upside down. Be aware that they can escape from the tiniest, tiniest holes and gaps, so make the box secure. You can try and feed mosquitoes and the suchlike with tweezers until I can pick him up and get him some mealworms.
Sean
This post seeks non-urgent bat advice. Sorry.
Stray Dog, can you get any diseases from bats in Taiwan? I kind of like the little fellas, but in my home country they can carry some lethal diseases - one of my lecturers at uni had to be taken by helicopter to the nearest hospital after a bite from a microbat on a field trip.
Just wondering how confident to be in handling them here, if the need arises.
Bats carry rabies, even in non-rabies countries (the UK had a human rabies death not too long ago from a bat-bite). Taiwan officially has no rabies, but bats cross water, which is what happened in the UK.
For other diseases, I’m not sure right now, but I’m waiting for a response from my old bat group and then will pop them your question.
Stray Dog: No hurry!
I’m Australian and have a major in Zoology. One of my assignments at uni was to create a phylogenetic tree of all rabies related viruses (including the Australian Bat Lyssavirus) and make a determination as to whether ABL should be considered a distinct species from rabies . . .
In Australia, there is an insectivorous (microbat) ABL and a fruit bat (macrobat) ABL, which are ‘ecologically’ isolated from each other - these bats have such different lifestyles that their blood never mixes, and so the two strains of the virus continue to diverge. ABL is a “rabies like” virus: not rabies, strictly speaking, but lethal enough! (There have been a couple of deaths in Australia that science knows of).
Don’t know anything about Taiwanese bats, that’s all. When I sit down and watch a sunset I’m always looking for the emergence of microbats. When I run at night I see them around the streetlights. And if I see one injured, well, I’m not going to pick it up with my bare hands!
If you know someone who needs a biologically literate volunteer, let me know. And again: no hurry!
Hi guys,
I neglected to pay my phone bill this week, so can’t actually call anyone. Boy, do I feel like a retard. I have to go out now to meet a new student, but will swing by Grandma Nitti’s around 12ish. Sean, if you see this, I can meet you there or give you a call using Raibow’s phone.
The bat-fellah moved to a different corner overnight, so I guess he’s not dead. I’ll leave him at home in the dark until I know where he’s going.
I walked the path in two directions last night, and found him on the return. I guess he had some disaster which caused him to hit the ground in the 15 minutes or so before I picked him up, and was traumatised for most of the walk home. The wing won’t open under its own power, and I’m wary of pulling at it just to have a look. As I’d rather see someone with more knowledge try to fix it, my curiousity is prolly less important than his pain.
For those concerned about rabies, I saw that on the UK bat website last night (loved the page titled “bat cimes”) and had a closer look at my hand. Absolutely no sign of broken skin, so for this size of bat it’s probably safe to handle them in an emergency. He’s tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I should have taken a pic just for battery9, but no sense distressing him now.
I haven’t paid my bill either. :roflmao:
If anyone can text Loretta to ask him to either leave the bat at Nitti’s (if he’s taken it with him already) or leave it at home where I’ll collect it later, I’ll be grateful.
I’m busy until about 3, so I can’t get to Nitti’s until after then.
Hmm . . . how will I know which he’s done? . . . Anyone wanna call Loretta and post his response for me?
Finely coordinated rescue, this one . . . 
From John Puckett of Kent Bat Group:
"All will depend on the bat species you have and the extent of its injuries. The likelihood is that it will be an adult at this time of year. If it has a fracture of its humerus or forearm we normally euthanase the bat as recovery is not possible. If its injury is not so severe I suggest you proceed as follows:
Firstly give water via a small paint brush and then check the bat for injuries. Use gloves or a good cloth for handling. Don’t get bitten. Presumably you are up-to-date with your rabies vac. If the bat appears to be small use a plastic tank (look up Tommy tanks on the internet) Hang a couple of cloths from the sides, held up by the closed lid. Ensure the lid is tight fitting and use kitchen-roll paper for the bottom. The bat will need the cloth to hang up. If the bat is insectivorous you will need mealworms or the equivalent. We usually hand feed for the first day or two. Put a shallow dish of mealworms in the bottom of the tank. The same for the water.
If you can email a photo I can get Tony Hutson to identify your bat and let you know its dietary requirements. If you don’t think that it is insectivorous you could try some sugar water or honey water or dilute fruit juice to start with."
As this is daytime and the bat’s natural resting time, we really need do nothing right now other than provide cloth for it to hang on. I’ll take a look at the injury later and we’ll decide what to do. I have kept badly injured bats before and they thrived without being able to fly, though I don’t know how you measure their quality of life. They do get used to and enjoy being handled and stroked, amazingly. Let’s see. I’ll post pics and updates after I get the little beast.
Sean
I paid the phone bill while mooching around waiting for search parties to locate my landlord, having lost my house keys. Then I was able to phone Sean and tell him that I couldn’t get access to the bat until someone showed up to let me in. What a great day.
I’m in now, and the bat has crawled up the wall of the box so it’s hidden under the folded-down lid. I searched for ages, assuming that he had escaped. Bugger!
I’m pretty sure the injury is to the shoulder or upper ‘arm’. 
Fascinating concept, the measuring of a wounded bat’s quality of life. Is there some universal scale that would allow us to compare André’s* current situation to, say, the average Taiwanese high school student?
Well, Andre indeed appears to have a broken ‘upper arm’. But he drank a little water and ate one whole mealworm already. I’m awaiting prognosis from the bat experts in England. But I doubt I’ll euthanize him.
Pics soon.
Both are candidates for youth in asia? 
Groan. You don’t get funnier as you get older.
Walking to meet Stray Dog (he navigates by 7-11s) yesterday I was worried that young Andre would be upset by the wind blowing around the newspaper that he was living under. So I put my hand into the box to hold it still, and next thing he crawled onto my fingers. Obviously he had moved on from the the idea of biting me! So there I was with this little cute thing in my hand, him putting all his trust in me and holding on like crazy, having to give him up to someone else. I felt awful.
You take care of my little pal! 
Good luck, Andre.
Andre’s compound fracture is difficult and dangerous to treat, and I’ve been advised that the UK group understandably euthanizes bats like this.
But Andre has a great appetite (he helped himself to seven more mealworms last night) and enjoys human warmth, so I’m tempted to see how he gets along.
The trickiest thing for me is learning how to keep the mealworms thriving; most died last night, for some reason, and are now feeding the frogs and birds outside my house.
[quote=“Stray Dog”]Andre’s compound fracture is difficult and dangerous to treat, and I’ve been advised that the UK group understandably euthanizes bats like this.
But Andre has a great appetite (he helped himself to seven more mealworms last night) and enjoys human warmth, so I’m tempted to see how he gets along.
The trickiest thing for me is learning how to keep the mealworms thriving; most died last night, for some reason, and are now feeding the frogs and birds outside my house.[/quote]
Probably froze.
I suggest you carry them around in the crotch of your ratty, yellowing Y-fronts and dole them out to Andy one at a time.
Perhaps you could take the opportunity to train him to do a few tricks.
Maybe see if he can be taught to deliver all of Keifer Sutherland’s lines from The Lost Boys…
Can’t be that hard, after all Keifer did it, and he gets 2 bottles of Jack Daniels a day for the same thing…