barky the bat

Yesterday I posted a photo on facebook of a bat that I found in my window. Little did you know that I spent the rest of the afternoon keeping an eye on him (and reading in between taking pictures of him). He is very small and according to my family he looks an awful lot like the same bat that was spotted in my other window about a month ago. Once night fell, they closed the second glass window and he didn't return, but they didn't close all of the second glass windows (there are three windows in my room). I wasn't that freaked out to see him yesterday, mostly because I knew he couldn't get inside my room, and also because I had been curious about having a bat in my window ever since my family had told me the story of the first one. I have decided that bats are basically flying mice and are equivalently cute (they are just about the same size!). If you tap on the glass he'll wiggle his ears.

Anyway, I wanted to name him Batty but my sister said that was a fairly predictable name, and liking to be contrarian I settled on Barky. Barky has made literally no noises that my ears can detect. He flew away to stalk night insects sometime after 10:30 pm when I left my room to watch some tv and he was safely there, but before 1:30 am when I went to sleep. Amazingly I have found a creature which sleeps more than me, because I didn't get a chance to close the window while he was away. When I went to sleep last night I didn't have enough energy to deal with closing a window - especially because this would make my room vulnerable to an infiltration of bugs, which I just didn't want. My brother was in the basement so if I happened to get a bunch of bugs or even Barky in my room, I wouldn't have had a place of refuge. So when I woke up this morning (I use that word loosely, since it really was 11:30), I wasn't that surprised to see that Barky had returned. I snapped some more pictures. Now I have to wait until the middle of the night again to close him out. It will be a little bit sad, since he would make a pretty cute and harmless pet behind glass, but I recognize that, as Hagrid once rather ironically said, people can be stupid about their pets. I don't want to be stupid. I just want Barky to have a nice insect-eating life.

Since I took 71 pictures of Barky (how on earth did that happen why do I take so many pictures I don't even), here are some of my favorites!

He is so cute.

Obviously he stayed through sunset, but surprisingly he stuck around until well after that too - until after 10:30! What a champ.

He is kind of like a vampire.

A very, very small vampire.