Here is "Little Squeeky", and here is his story :3

Recently, my boyfriend and I had a little ball of fur and wings plop unexpectedly into our lives.

While taking the bedroom's air conditioner out of the window for the season, my boyfriend unknowing dislodged a little black bat that was trying to hibernate in the filter. Ryan was halfway out of the room when he noticed some small, angry squeaking/screeching. He turned around, and noticed the rather unhappy small bat on the carpet. He put the machine down, went to the kitchen to grab a small empty cardboard egg roll box, put on a pair of his thicker work gloves, then went back to the bedroom and put the newly-dubbed "Little Squeeky" in the box, and put the box in a cupboard until I (the biological scientist) got home to figure out what to do with him. He gave me a call, told me what happened, and then went off to a Horror Larp to go kill some zombies and vampires.

So a few hours later I got back to the apartment, put on the gloves, and gave LS a look-over. He was a Silver-Haired Bat, he was still alive, a bit stressed out, didn't have a lot of energy, and did not enjoy me picking him up whatsoever - important things being that he was on the verge of hibernation, he's an insect-eating bat which means he has no food to eat, but he's still active enough to find a place to hibernate on his own. We waited until nighttime and then went outside to release him back into the suburban wild.

However, the attempt to release Little Squeeky back into the outdoors did not go as planned - when we got downstairs and outside to where the tree in front of the window is, he wouldn't budge. When I opened up my hand and held him on my flat hand near a flat surface on the tree, he just remained curled in a ball. I then backed away from the tree and tilted my hand at a 45 degree angle and made soft pushing movements to give him a better launching pad to fly from, but he just dug his thumbs into my glove and stayed curled into a ball, shivering. While he was perfectly healthy, once he was outside he was too cold to leave my hand. I told my boyfriend (yes, told, he didn't get a say in it) that we were going to take him to the wildlife centre tomorrow where he'd be given a nice warm place to hibernate. I cupped my top hand over him, took him back inside, and but him back inside the small cardboard wonton box with a bottle cap of water, and then put the box in a relatively sound-proof empty cupboard so that he wouldn't be disturbed by us or our TV until morning.

When we got up that morning, we gave Wildlife Haven Rehabilitation Centre a call to see if they would accept him, they called back and said they have a Bat Specialist who'd give him some veterinary care (vaccinations and stuff), and then find him a nice, warm, artificial cave to hibernate in with some other bats that were brought to the centre recently.

We took the box out of the cupboard, took the bottle cap/water dish out of the box (he did have some to drink - another good sign that he's okay), brought the box to the car, and headed out with Little Squeeky for the 15-minute drive to WHRC.

When we got there, they confirmed my suspicion that he was healthy, but it was just too cold for him to fly by now. They said that Elaine (the bat specialist) would pick him up later and that he'd probably hibernate in either an artificial cave outside the city or in the University of Winnipeg's Richardson Building's Bat Rooms with a few other bats that live there.

As it turned out, Little Squeeky will be wintering over at the U of W's Richardson Building. And for those thinking it's cruel to keep bats indoors and 'captive', here's some background info. This building is a ridiculously eco-friendly building - there's a few living trees growing in it and it's where most of the awesome ecological science happens, and where I happen to have 1/3 of my classes and all of my labs! Also, the bats, while used for research, are simply observed. The professor that created the program is a huge bat lover and dedicated researcher of them (his site on the labs he teaches can be found here http://www.willisbatlab.org/) and he does not believe in harming them for the sole reason of "seeing what happens". Bats come here when they're orphaned, crippled by disease, or otherwise unable to survive in the wild - we can keep them in a comfortable environment (not zoo-quality, much more accurate to the wild) and monitor their health, life span, habits, etc. Since Little Squeeky was an urban bat, he will fare better here than at the artificial cave outside of the city.

Little Squeeky shall spend the next few months hibernating with a small group of Little Brown Bats, and will be released near where we found him once the bugs start appearing in spring.

I'm not likely to get to visit him during the winter as you need an access card to get over there, but it's nice to know he'll be near me, safe and sound, until he's able to go and live free again :)