Staff writer
A trio of abandoned bat babies was recently rescued by an anonymous Good Samaritan.
Lena Kleiner of Hillsboro witnessed the rescue after seeing the bat mom ditch her babies.
Kleiner was walking her Boston terrier, Jordy, down Kennedy St. when she noticed something strange by a parked car.
“I wondered, ‘What in the world is that?’” she said. “There was something weird flopping in the street.”
Lena inched closer, peered down at the oddity, and suddenly realized what it was.
“Mama bat had three babies stuck to her,” Lena said. “She flew off while I was looking at them.”
She thought they might have been nursing, but mama bat didn’t return.
Curious, Jordy sniffed, but Lena kept him back. She didn’t want him to eat the bat’s babies, which lied motionless long enough for Lena to question whether they were alive.
Then one briefly took flight and it landed nearby.
The other bats stirred, prompting Lena to hustle home and retrieve her husband, Ryan.
They returned, fearing cars might kill the bats if they remained in the street.
However, when it came to removing the babies from harms way, the Kleiners were apprehensive.
Lena said bats don’t scare her, but there was “no way” she was going to touch one, and Ryan didn’t want to touch them either.
“I have no experience with bats,” Ryan said. “I think about rabies when I think about bats.”
During their discussion, a Good Samaritan sporting a shaved head parked his blue Jeep Cherokee, got out, and intervened.
Lena said she thought he lived near their home and Ryan thought the man might have once been a park ranger, but neither knew his name.
“He seemed familiar with bats,” Ryan said. “He just scooped them up out of the street with his bare hands.
“He looked totally comfortable holding the bat when I took its picture.”
The man casually placed the screeching babies up off the ground in a crook of a tree then drove away.
What became of the abandoned bat babies and their missing mother is unknown. Lena said, however, that the babies seemed large, possibly on the verge of adolescence, maybe even adulthood.
“They might have been ready to leave their mama,” she said.