I heard a scrabbling inside the woodburning stove this evening. Went to investigate and found a small bat crawling around. I collected it in a jamjar (my universal solution for small wild things) but it clung onto the edge of the woodburner with a vice-like grip and screamed the whole time - well, sort of hissed. I put it outside and that was that.
However, I'm wondering how on earth it got inside the fire. There's a stainless steel liner the whole way up the chimney so can it have fallen down from the top? There is a mesh cage over the chimney pot but the mesh is to keep jackdaws out, not tiny bats.
Or is it possible that it got in somehow from the attic?
Next job I suppose is to investigate the attic for roosting bats - which I hope are not there as we do need to do some work on the roof slates.