Cabin Camping, Firewood & Surprise, There's a Bat!

Last weekend, my buddy Brian D. and I went down to his church friends' cabin about an hour south of Springfield. We stayed overnight Friday, then cut some firewood on Saturday before heading home.

Friday eve, we made it down about 7pm or so. Brian knocked out a dinner of steaks, potatoes and beans while I plinked around on my cigar box banjo. We sat up talking a bit before calling it a night close to 11pm, I hit the couch to read for a bit while Brian headed up to the loft.

Saturday, up about 8am. I made coffee and breakfast, testing out my Turkish coffee pot for use in cowboy coffee.

Then we headed out back of the cabin to walk the property some, looking for fatwood. We found a handful of downed eastern red cedars and cut the heavily resined fatwood from the upper facing branches of the fallen trees. It's very waxen in appearance when you cut it. I haven't tried yet, but it's supposed to burn very easily and can be used much like parrafin fire starter sticks.

After patrolling the grounds a bit, we got to work on why we came down for part of the weekend, the firewood. Brian took a chainsaw to a downed tree while I split the logs with a maul and axe. He then downed a hollow and dying elm. While he worked it over, again, with the chainsaw, I took to splitting the sections he was done with.

As I was splitting a wide hollow section, a live bat spilled out of the cavity I had just cleaved in two.

We placed the bat in separate hollow stump to recover. Which I believe it did, since we had another encounter with a low flying bat buzzing me as I was splitting more wood, before it circled the clearing and the area where the elm had stood 20 minutes earlier. It then went on its way up through the woods. Later in the day, as we were driving home, we saw a few more bats out flying over the road. That gave us some hope for the survivability of the one we wrestled from hibernation. If others were out of their own volition on an unseasonably warm January afternoon (60+ degrees F), then the one we disturbed would probably be fine.