I'm the kind of person who had relatively frequent contact with small wild animals when I was a kid. Among the more unique experiences was nursing a Little Brown bat back to strength to be able to fly off after my Dad found it in the wood pile.

I never would have thought I'd have another experience like it, but yesterday I did.

My husband was cleaning some ivy off the brick on his mother's house. We heard a hissing...turns out it was the biggest bat I've ever seen, roosting on the bricks. My familiarity was with Little Browns, never anything bigger. This one was huge compared to them. Very pretty, too! Kind of a golden coloured coat with grey-white frosting on the fur tips.

The poor thing was too cold and too disoriented to take off. We put her in a box with a towel and I ended up watching over her while my husband continued with the ivy. She was pissed off when we moved her, but she calmed down in the box to the point that I even managed to pet her for awhile (oddly enough, no protests from her). Her fur was incredibly soft! Think rabbit pelt.

She finally warmed up enough to be able to fly when we were getting ready to put her somewhere safe on the roof so she'd be out of predator's reach once we left. She took off and landed in a tree, doing a very good impression of being a dead leaf.

After I got home, I looked up bats of the area to try to figure out what she was. Turns out she's a Hoary Bat (http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/bat-6.jpg), which I have never seen before. It was just really neat to be able to get up close to a bat other than the ones I was used to. I did get some photos, but haven't gotten them off my in-laws camera yet.

Nature is awesome :D