We had one heck of a storm last night here in Manhattan, KS. I've never heard wind like that before. Before the kids went to bed, we were watching the insanity from their bedroom window and they were calling out to the trees to hold on tight! I was trying to get a cute silhouette picture of them playing, but it had already gotten too dark. Somehow I snagged this shot right as a flash of lightning lit up the sky behind them. <3
I'm shocked that they didn't wake up as the storm continued to ramp up. It seriously felt like our house was going to blow away!
One of our trees was injured, a part of our driveway had somehow ventured down the street a little, and our metal rocking bench was flipped, but we escaped any major damage.
This tree is just two houses away and as we headed toward City Park for the kids' tennis lessons, we discovered plenty more broken and uprooted trees.
We dropped Annika at her 9am lesson then went back to check out this enormous fallen tree near the MAC on Poyntz.
We passed a smaller tree that had fallen on the sidewalk on the West side of City Park on our way to a much larger tree that had clearly been struck by lightning. It appears a large part of the tree not directly related to the stricken section of the trunk had come down as well.
We carefully poked around, smelling the burned wood and inspecting the bigger breaks. Nathan called out that he could hear birds in the tree. When I approached, I noticed two tiny baby birds on the ground; both appeared to be dead. Then I heard the chirping that had caught my son's attention and quickly realized these were not birds, but baby bats! I looked further inside the cavernous section of their home and was amazed by all of the tiny bats hanging in slumber.
I was so glad I had my good camera with me so that I could get great natural light pictures.
I had to send my son over to his tennis lesson and retrieve my daughter between phone calls to try and figure out what I could possibly do to help these tiny babies. I first called my friend who is the exotic animals coordinator for the Riley County Humane Society. She suggested I reach out to the Milford Nature Center. When the woman I spoke to said they were already spending too much time nursing 6 other baby bat rescues, I decided to keep calling around, but fortunately, after I'd gotten thumbs down from Sunset Zoo and the KSU Vet School and couldn't reach anyone at the recommended Bat Conservation International number, the Milford Nature Center person texted me to say she was sending someone my way.
While I waited and not knowing how long it might take or even if the bats could be saved, I decided to call the Parks & Rec office to make sure nobody tried to clean up the tree before the babies were cared for. I was able to immediately reach the Park Superintendent, who was just a few minutes away at the time. He showed up and notified the appropriate people of the situation and promised to stay in contact. Unfortunately, it sounds like this giant tree is unlikely to survive.
Vanessa from the Milford Nature Center arrived very quickly! After taking a quick look inside the hollowed log, she informed me that we were looking at baby Big Brown Bats as she had suspected and that she was going to do her best to remove and care for them until they could be transferred elsewhere. Fantastic news! I've always been a fan of bats, but I know very little about them. She explained that this was a colony of bats and that they were clearly different ages and that most likely each of the dozen tiny bats that we were looking at had a different mother. Wow! I felt horrible for those Mama bats and wondered if they were just above our heads in the damaged tree.
It didn't take her long to remove the first 11 bats, but one bat had hidden too far out of reach and we didn't have a flash light or any good way to coax him out. She eventually gave up and attempted to separate out the bats to get a head count, being careful not to make direct contact for fear that they might be carrying rabies. At that point, I admitted that my son had picked up one of the bats that I thought was dead on the ground to put it with the rest of the colony and that my daughters and I might have made contact. She ran to her car to get some disinfectant wipes, gently scolded me, and instructed all of us to clean our hands with the wipes and again with soap and water as soon as possible. Of course I knew better!
A few other people had gathered by this point to check out the tiny attraction.
They were starved and latching on to each other in an attempt to nurse. Vanessa said that she planned to feed them a special blend of goat's milk and ground up meal worms.
How cute are they?!? They look like tiny dragons!
We said our goodbyes and I received a text a couple hours later updating me that she had not only successfully fed all 11 babies, but she returned to the tree and was able to retrieve the 12th baby. How incredible to think that they would have been destroyed with their home had my son not heard their tiny voices!
I look forward to another update from Vanessa and will be sure to share it here!
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June 10, 2015
I just wanted to share a quick update to the bat rescue story!
After doing some extra research, Vanessa decided the best chance of survival for these tiny bats was to return them to their home with full bellies. She carefully put them back where we found them that same night and blocked the entrance from predators, leaving the small, original bat hole for the parents to return and move their babies. Early the next morning, there was no sign of the bats and the added protection was untouched. We're going to happily believe the parents indeed came back for their young!
Big thanks to Vanessa for taking the time to rush over, rescue the babies, feed them, and keep an eye on things all during her much needed and short vacation time.
Parks & Rec was hard at work removing the damaged tree parts from City Park yesterday morning sans the baby bats. :)
