AIBU to have kept an injured bat in the fridge?

[thatbatwoman]

Name changed for this obvs, but having seen 2 bat threads in recent days, I thought I'd share my tale...and to show how times have really changed!

In the early 90's we lived out in the stix and had what was considered then, a rare (ish) colony of Natturas bats in the attic. Every year the Bat Man would put a tarp down in the attic and at the end of the season, would come back to monitor the droppings, see if they'd increased! We would often see random men with binoculars sitting on the wall outside the house, eager to spot them.

One day, I looked out of the window to see a bat circling in daylight and then fall to the ground. I rang the Bat Man,who gave me the following advice to care for it til he arrived:
1)Scoop it up into a box (i can't remember if I even wore gloves!)
2)Add a pair of tights or stockings
3) Add dog food, if we had any (which we did)
4And then..........take all the food out and...PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just did it without question and can remember peeping inside the fridge at one point before he arrived and seeing it crawling over the side walls!!!!

Having read the last 2 bat / rabies threads, I seriously questioned my recollection of what was really a very clear event. I was much younger and a bit daft. So I clicked the AI mode last night and asked whether this was likely back then....and indeed, this would have been the advice to care for a grounded bat in the early 90's!!!!!!

I guess my question would be AIBU....to have put a bat in my fridge?????!!!

So the bat could crawl inside and presumably found them comfy. I also wasn't a child as someone mentioned...I was early 20's and still quite daft!

That was me. Somehow I though this happened when you were a kid. Sorry! 🤦‍♀️

Please explain the stockings. Did you put the bat into a leg of the stockings? Was it to prevent it from trying to fly? There's no way I'd have done that! 😮
Anytime I need to catch something I use the Mason jar and construction paper method.

I’ve been edumafied. So pleased, I’ll know what to do if this ever occurs!

I was beginning to feel disappointed no one had squeezed this in!

No, I rolled each stocking back, having stretched them a bit. I put one in each corner of an open box, like two tunnels, with some dog food in another corner and put the bat in the middle. With the idea that it could then choose what it wanted!

So lovely that you did that. I adore bats. It seems being in a cool place like a fridge (but only temporarily) helps them to stay calm and reduce their energy needs when they're weak or injured.

Who can resist cute bats

Okay. So the bat could sort of burrow into them.
What kind of dog food? That is very strange. I really would've thought fruit of some sort.

It was a few scoops of tinned dog food!!!!

Neighbour: "We have a drinks fridge in the garage"
Hyacinth: "But WE have a tortoise fridge in ours!"

Sorry Moosey, only joking 😂

I actually love you OP 😂 best post in a long time! So funny! It’s crazy the things we look back years later and release we just randomly done without question

Awww, thank you! I remember shortly after we found a very distressed seal pup, alone on the beach. No fridge available (!) and before mobile phones, so I waited with it, hissing at me, while my friend ran back to phone the seal rescue. We then followed on behind the van and watched it go into a big pool with other seals. They let us visit for a few weeks to see how he was doing. We named him Cyril

I mean you all survived and it was obviously fine but I’d be mostly concerned about it shitting and pissing on your food (assuming you didn’t empty that out first!).

Maybe that's why the OP was told to take all the food out of the fridge.

Although, I image it was more likely because of the likelihood of contamination of the food from the bat.

Having said that, I'm not sure I'd be willing to empty my fridge so a bat has somewhere comfortable to retire to.

Just remember, no one should be handling bats without a licence, as they're protected. Though doing what a bat warden tells you is fine.

If you volunteered to be a bat warden, you would have a legit reason to have a bat fridge.

You were right @Mumtobabyhavoc - it was for the bat to have a snuggly place, not to stretch over the box as I’d imagined (or for the bat to wear 😂)

And you could keep it in your bat cave.

Sorry. I had to say it.

You sound like my sort of person. Well done for all the creatures you have helped x

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

"Batman" 😂 so funny.
A friend of mine had bats in the loft of her upstairs flat. She regularly used to wake up and find a bat fluttering about in her kitchen sink trying to escape. No idea why the sink was where they always seemed to end up. Or how they got out of the loft - a gap by the edge of the hatch I guess.

I love this story! My own story dates back to the very early nineties. We lived in an old cottage with a colony of bars living in a nearby barn. We went through a period of coming home from work to find a dead bat in the doorstep, with no idea what was killing them. We contacted the Bat Man who told us to put the next one we found in a box and post it to him. So I did. The first problem was how to write the covering letter - 'Dear Sir, please find enclosed one dead bat' seemed a bit blunt. The second problem was at the Post Office, when they asked us ' for the purposes of security, what is in the parcel?' I lied. The final problem was the Bat Man was unable to discover what the problem was because, in his words, 'on arrival, the bat was too liquid to investigate.' 😱

Oh. My. Gawd. 🤢

Not to mention the rabies (100% fatality rate). Just for completion.

Rabies doesn't have 100% fatality rate. Not in humans, anyway. Do you mean the bats?

It’s over 99% fatality rate in humans. So not a risk anyone would want to take.

Yes, and there is a small window to seek treatment before it's too late.