02/07/2024
Animals are here, in part, to help us grow and evolve. Sometimes they send us a message using their behavior. If they politely tap us on the shoulder to deliver the message, and we miss it, or dismiss it, they turn up the heat.
Most people have never seen a living newborn bat because the babies can’t fly until they are around three weeks old. We’ve had a lost stray adult in the house on occasion over the years, shown it out and everyone is happy. Last year, there were more than a few. From the front porch, one July evening, something inside the house caught my eye. One flying bat, then two, then an entire conga line of them making a whirlwind around the dining room table. Animal control came and shooed them out. This time, however, not everyone was happy.
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I am a little freaked out by bats in the house. I’d still never harm one, of course, and I’d feed a hungry one outside, (I’ve done that) but when, in the morning, (we slept in our converted barn studio out back that night) one was fast asleep on a window blind, I knew we needed help.
There is a local wildlife expert who specializes in removing bats from homes. He offered a year-long guarantee once they had been evicted. He was our man. In Massachusetts, it is illegal to evict bats until August when their breeding and birthing season is complete. The babies are flying by mid July so no one is harmed. This very nice, brave man came, checked the house out and found an enormous colony, including four nursing mothers, in our attic. He sealed the spots where they had likely accidentally come into the house, then came back in August and evicted them. Excellent. Next summer, we would have no worries.
Late one evening, at the end of June this year, my husband Jim called to me from inside the house. I was enjoying the stars and summer sounds outside.
“Come look at these tiny toes hanging over the drapery pole in here. Is that a tree frog?”
I peered around to the other side of the curtain where I could see the rest of its body. “Nope. That’s a bat,” I said. There, hanging by one limb, was the tiniest living bat I had ever seen. It bobbed its head like a human newborn as it tried to control its body. Jim caught it gently in a cloth and set it outside on the side of a large tree where it could easily hang on and it began climbing. We were sad to realize that without its mother, it would not survive. It was one of a dozen newborns we were to find over the next week. I saw what I imagined was curtain baby’s mother, in the morning (back to the studio for the night),fast asleep on the brickwork in the kitchen, and told her to please go find her baby, but knew that isn’t how that works.
The wildlife expert came to remove her safely and rechecked the house again. Even he was stumped about the babies. They can wander away from the roost when the mothers are out hunting but the only explanation for one on the drapery pole is that it was born there. The visitations continued for several days, flying and newborns appearing (and subsequently the bat guy to redirect them). Eventually, even Fish and Wildlife agreed that while we all want to protect the beautiful bats, they don’t belong inside the house, especially in such huge numbers, and needed to be evicted. When, in the presence of our wildlife expert, multiple babies emerged from the side of an interior chimney like water squeezed from a sponge, and an adult rose out from behind the mantle, it was time.
Here’s their message to which I listened with both ears. I had missed the shoulder tap.
The largest bat, who had roosted on the chimney in the kitchen, and who I felt was watching me, is the one I chose to connect with.
Instantly I felt scattered chaos. She showed herself panicky and looking every which way without a clear path. Initially, I thought this had to do with the members of her colony being lost and ending up in the house. Then there was quiet. I asked what the babies were about. Why were there so many in weird places.
“Those are ideas” she said, and I instantly understood.
The message from the bats, first on a few little signs and then on a glowing, backlit billboard, was that I needed to let go of some of the chaotic little ends in my life in order to bring my creative ideas to life and see them mature. If I didn’t, they could not be fed and grow. They wouldn’t reach their full potential. This colony sacrificed a lot to get this information to me.
Their advice resonates with me because I recently left a challenging management position to mend my workaholic ways and simplify my life, making more time for creativity. It was a big step and hard to unwind myself from the company. I kept working on a project for them even after I resigned because “there was no one else” who knew it as well as I did. This effectively gave me two jobs and my life became even more chaotic than before. The bats showed me what I needed to do. They meant it and before another bat flies at dusk, I will hand over the old project to someone else and start nurturing and growing some ideas. Sounds good.
