The time and date of my convocation was just announced. It’s on June 21 at 10:00am. That’s the same day as the summer solstice. There is a website with more information about the ceremony, but most of the pages just say “Information coming soon.”
I don’t know how many tickets I’ll be allowed, but I know in the past students have always been running around trying to buy extra tickets for all of their family members to see them graduate.
Yesterday Celine and I came home and were out on the sidewalk with our keys in hand, about to open the front door, when I noticed a tiny brown nose sticking out from under the door. It was the bat! We looked through the window and saw that we wouldn’t be able to open the door without squishing him, so Celine had to poke at him with a piece of paper through the crack under the door, trying to make him move. He didn’t like that at all, and screeched at us quite a bit. Eventually, Celine managed to get him out of the way, we scooted Banjo upstairs, and had a closer look at the little guy.
He was clearly exhausted and could hardly move. He also seemed pretty stressed out. Celine and I felt bad for leaving him trapped in the hallway for so long. We should have done something as soon as we discovered him two weeks ago, but I thought he was fine as long as he was sleeping.
We called the Kingston Humane Society for help and were told that bats don’t hibernate, and that the best thing for us to do would be to put the bat outside and let it fly away. I told the guy I didn’t want to do that, and finally he gave me the phone number of the Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre. Celine gave the bat some water from a cotton swab while I talked to Sue Meech at the Wildlife Centre, and within an hour we were driving to Napanee to drop off the bat. When we got there Sue told us the guy at the Humane Society was wrong on both counts and if we had listened to him the bat would be dead by now.
Sue told us our bat was a Big Brown Bat, he was male, and that this was probably his first winter. She fed him some cat hairball formula and he drank about 2ml of it, even after all the water Celine gave him. He was thirsty! (Sue said the hairball formula is full of vitamins and molasses, and she has never seen any animal of any species refuse it!). After he finished drinking he weighed 18 grams, so we figure he was about 15 grams when we found him.
Sue said she’ll keep feeding him for about a week until he reaches 20 grams, then she’ll let him hibernate until the spring. She says she wants to release him near our apartment when the weather is warm enough. She got very excited when she found out Celine is certified as a veterinary assistant and has been vaccinated against rabies, and she asked Celine to volunteer at the centre!
Photos: tiny eyes, resting, smiling, ready to travel.
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