With a third I waited until the bat seemed to be actually swallowing, and unable to either discontinue that process or open its mouth to any extent.[1]
Its rage and perplexity were comical to behold, and, when the fly was really down, it seemed to almost burst with the effort to express its indignation. But this did not prevent it from falling into the same trap again; and, to make a long story short, it finally learned by experience that, while chewing and swallowing were more or less interrupted by snapping at me, both operations were quite compatible with my gentle stroking of its head. And even a bat has brains enough to see the foolishness of losing a dinner in order to resent an unsolicited kindness.
In a few days the bat would take flies from my fingers; although, either from eagerness or because blinded by the light, it too often nipped me sharply in its efforts to seize the victim.
Its voracity was almost incredible. For several weeks it devoured at least fifty house-flies in a day (it was vacation, and my playmates had to assist me), and once disposed of eighty between daybreak and sunset.
This bat I kept for more than two months. It would shuffle across the table when I entered the room, and lift up its head for the expected fly. When traveling it was carried in my breast-pocket.
In the fall it died, either from overeating or lack of exercise, for I dared not let it out-of-doors, and it was so apt to injure itself in the rooms that I seldom allowed it to fly.
I should add that it drank frequently and greedily from the tip of a camel's hair pencil.
The following bits of bat biography are from White's "Natural History of Selborne," and the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History:"
"Having caught a lively male specimen of the common 'long-eared bat' (Plecotus auritus) and placed the little fellow in a wire-gauze cage, and inserted a few large flies, he was soon attracted by their buzz, and, pricking up his ears (just as a donkey does), he pounced upon his prey. But, instead of taking it directly into his mouth, he covered it with his body and beat it by aid of its arms, etc., into the bag formed by the interfemoral membrane. He then put his head under his body, withdrew the fly from the bag, and devoured it at leisure.
"This appeared to be always the modus operandi, more or less cleverly performed. Several times, when the fly happened to be on the flat surface of the ground, the capture appeared more difficult, and my little friend was, by his exertions, thrown on his back. The tail could
- ↑ I did not understand this at the time. If my readers will try it, they will find that it is very difficult to even begin to swallow with the mouth open, and almost impossible to prevent the morsel from descending after reaching the back of the throat.
