Rescuing Elfie; an Eastern Bentwing tangled in thread.

The rescue call came in as a microbat tangled in wire, and I thought it would probably be a juvenile flying-fox on barbed wire, but the MOP was adamant (and she was quite correct) that this was a microbat, and it had been tangled in some kind of fine synthetic thread hanging from a balcony 2 floors above her apartment. The thread looked a little like cheap kite string. The lucky little batty was rescued as soon as she saw it, and the thread was cut off quickly without the lovely MOP being bitten or scratched by the little one; Elfie didn't struggle, being quite exhausted by the whole entanglement and dangling by her wrist thing, which could have been for hours. Entanglement injuries in bats are serious, whether they're microbats or megabats, causing bruising in the wings, swelling, and membrane damage where the blood circulation has been cut off. Elfie is no exception to this; her membrane injuries are just as serious as a flying-fox who has been tangled in fruit tree netting or barbed wire. At rescue, she already had a noticeably swollen wrist and forearm on the entangled side. I left her with a carer where she will get more fluids, analgesia and glucose to support her through her first days. No doubt some nom-nommy mealworms will feature in her near future. I have to say, after 19 years of rescuing batties, I've only ever rescued 2 Bentwing batties previously, and those were last month; Elfie is my 3rd Bentwing in a month, because these bats migrate a few hundred kilometres to their winter roosts and seem to be on the move at the moment. At this stage I don't know how she's going to do; her membrane injuries are pretty spectacular for such tiny creature, and Bentwings are quite stressy in care, especially for long periods of time. She'll go to a specialist carer and given some time for the injuries to either break down or start healing depending on how much damage has been done. Tolga Bat Hospital takes donations for our batties. Tolga is an awesome place in Far North Queensland, which has charity status. By sending donations to them, they get a percentage (and deserve every cent) and they can allocate money to me for batty expenses without it becoming part of my income stream (which makes tax time difficult). https://tolgabathospital.org/donate/ Mention Megabattie or Meg in the PayPal message box and the money will find its way to me. If no message box appears, please email Jenny to tell her that the money is for me. IMPORTANT: If you pay through the PayPal Giving Fund, can you please email Jenny with the AMOUNT DONATED and the name under which you have donated, OR just forward along the PP receipt. The Giving Fund doesn’t charge any fees (so the bats get more money) but PP doesn’t itemise out the amount, they just send a total every month, and we don’t know if the money is for Tolga or for Megabattie. Here’s Jenny’s email. [email protected]