My family spent the past week fishing and visiting Sharbot Lake, Canada. We rented a little two bedroom apartment/cabin at a lodge. At around 2:00 A.M. I slowly awoke to a slight rustling sound; I didn’t bother to open my eyes. I heard a flutter of wings which I presumed was a bird that had just flown from the window sill or something. It sounded like it flew to the other window, turned and then flew back to the first window, rinse and repeat. As I awoke I realized that the sound was coming from inside the room, not outside the windows and that since it was the middle of the night it was probably a bat, not a bird. This made it worth the effort of opening my eyes. It was dark, but sure enough there was a bat flying around the tiny bedroom. At this point I nudged my wife and said, “Joan, don’t freak out, but there’s a bat in our room”.
She didn’t freak out but held the blanket close to her chin ready to cover up in an instant. After making a few laps the bat clumsily crash into a corner of the room and rest for a minute. Joan was quick with the covers. Several of these landings were just over Joan’s head; her side of the bed was only a foot from the wall. I got the camera and took a few flash stills, then turned on the light and took a short movie clip.
When it landed by the door I threw a towel on it and proceeded to remove the bug screen. The bug screen was tough to remove and took a couple minutes. After I got it off I lifted the towel (while filming again). The bat was gone; I presumed that he had crawled under the door. This would put him in the living room/kitchen where our three daughters (3, 6 & 9) were sleeping on the pull out couch.
After a good search, I found nothing. I gave the nine year old a heads up and went back to bed. 25 minutes later she called out that she heard the bat. I opened the sliding door to the porch and waited while filming as the bat flew its pattern around the room. Eventually I opened the main door as well, but the bat was clueless of the open doors and kept doing laps. At one point a second bat entered the room through the door that I held open, but he left after a lap or two around the room. We think the first bat eventually left through the porch door, but none of us definitively saw it fly out.
During our stay in Canada we caught some fish too, but that was kind of boring by comparison.
Movie:
http://hallbuzz.com/movies/2008/bat.wmv(6 minutes, 50 MB)
