Poor Battsy..

Last friday my mom & my lil' sister found a very cute, small bat lying helplessly on the ground in our car's garage. My mom figured that it was injured so she kept it in a box.

Where did the bat come from? From the roof-top of my house!!! (and No B.B, i dont live inside a cave baahhhh ;P) Apparently there quite number of holes found at the roof which actually allow these bats to come in & roost. Bats are known to be active during night & every night i always hear this squeaking & crawling sound of hundred of feet on the ceiling which i first thought they were mice or rats or birds!!!

I was very excited with my first encountered handling with bat so i brought it to the campus & went off to my supervisor office, Dr David Lane to identify it. He carefully took the bat out of the box & just held using his bare hands only (without using any gloves that is!!) Of cos ler, in our biology department, he's the most experienced with handling bats compared to others.

So the name of the genus is Saccolaimus saccolaimus, which is commonly known as Naked-Rumped Pouched Bat which one of the high-flying bats. It's a male & still a juvenile & it eats insect. The bat have this cute small pouched below its chin to keep any insect that it catches. We found that one of its wings got injured thats probably why it didnt try to fly away.. After he carefully handled & observed the bat i asked him what should i do with it since it still a live. He told me to i.d it first & set it free or keep it as a pet. Then i kept the bat inside a sack that Dr Lane gave.

Right after finished talking with him, i went straight off to B.B room's & showed off my 1st bat. Cath & metis were there too. B.B got so excited about the bat & she wanted to take pictures of it. But the thing was, all of us were too penakut to take out the bat from the sack. So we sorta forced metis to do it instead :D

So the next day, i finally had the guts to hold the bat without using gloves after seeing how relaxed Salihah was when she took it out from the sack. Even B.B, cath & my siblings now arent afraid of touching it anymore..he's one hell of cute little fellaa~ hen ke'ai yo...

My lil sister named it Battsy (i know its pretty lame name for a male bat kan, but i decided just to stick with it) And I got so attached to the bat that i decided to keep it as a pet for 5 days only.. I tried to feed it with insects that i caught, it just wont eat. Look at the size of its tummy, mikin shrink liao without foods for almost a week..

Finally, one day when i was in the campus revising for my biochemistry test, my lil sister text me and said that Battsy heart beats were so weak & he was dying right in her hands.. How was i feeling? honestly i felt a bit sad of losing it... after all he's been a good pet to me..

But looking on the brighter side, i got to preserve Battsy as a wet specimen & keep it in the UBD museum and there'll be my NAME on it, wuuhooo!! :D

P.S: May you rest in peace Battsy...