"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
There's no need to kill it.

I'd prefer not to kill the poor thing if I can help it.
The trick is to find out where it got in, because this is the second
one. (The first either came out or died in a different wall. I think
it got out, as I never smelled anything bad.)

infecting them with incurable rabies that will cause them to
die in unspeakable agony.

It's just a grin-a-minute around here, isn't it?

Actually, I adore bats, but couldn't resist the temptation to play on
people's prejudices.

Bats will die fairly quickly if they don't have food, so you want to get
the
little critter outta there promptly. In theory, opening up everything
might
work, as the bat might have come in tru de window.


Best not kill it. I've just - 10 minutes ago - finished reading an
article
in my Sunday newspaper, about a mystery disease that is sweeping through
the
bat population of North America, and decimating whole colonies. They
think
that it might not be a disease as such, but a fungal infection which
leaves
a white deposit on the noses of the bats. Apparently, bats are
responsible
for consuming millions of tons of insects which do harm, and if the bat
situation becomes serious enough in terms of loss of numbers, it could
have
a devastating effect on the balance of the ecosystem.

People have been aware of this problem for decades. Though bats do have a
higher percentage of rabies than other mammals, it hardly ever transferred
to humans unless they touch a sick animals.

Bats are our friends. They kill tons and tons of inset pests. Love 'em.



According to this article, the current white nose problem, is a new one, not
a decades old one. The same fungus has also been found on bats in Europe,
but it doesn't appear to kill them, so they are thinking that maybe the
problem has existed over here before, and the bat population is immune to
the effects. They think that the white powder acts as an irritant, and keeps
waking the bats during their hibernation period, and that this results in
premature useage of the fat deposits that they have built up to see them
through, and thus, they die of starvation.

Arfa