Bat woman: Ebony shares a house with some of Australia’s most misunderstood creatures – ABC News

A “normal” evening in Ebony McIntosh’s world often involves grooming tiny bats with a toothbrush, or perhaps watching one zoom around her lounge room.
The trained wildlife nurse is one of only a handful of Australians qualified to rehabilitate sick and injured microbats.
She got hooked on wildlife caring at age 11 after raising her first possum joey.
Ebony McIntosh has been caring for animals since she was 11 years old.(Supplied: Ebony McIntosh)
But it wasn’t until she started caring for flying foxes in Brisbane when she was 20 that she fell in love with bats and her life changed forever.
“[Bats are] definitely my biggest passion,” she says.
Over the past six years she’s cared for up to 150 bats at once in her home.
And as if sharing your house with bats wasn’t enough, Ebony has done it while living in an actual share house.
So what’s involved in bat rescue?
Hang on … what’s a microbat?
Australia has two types of bats: megabats such as flying foxes and microbats.
If you spot a bat that has little eyes and big ears, chances are it’s a microbat.
There are around 80 species of microbat found across Australia.
While most microbats are tiny many of Ebony’s winged patients only weigh around 4 grams some species such as ghost bats are the size of flying foxes.
But unlike their megabat cousins, which use their eyesight to get around, microbats use sound or echolocation to find their prey usually insects.
A tiny microbat sits on the fingers of a carer.(Supplied: Andrew Knott)
People often only become aware they are sharing an environment with a microbat when one turns up in trouble.
“At the end of summer juveniles are learning to fly, so you get a lot of crash landings, particularly in homes,” Ebony says.
“When you get really hot, dry days, people find them stuck in water, sometimes in water bowls or the kitchen sink.”
“We get a lot of people calling up about a little semi-drowned bat in the bath.”
Winter can also be a danger time, when bats go in and out of a mini-hibernation state called torpor.
“If they don’t have enough fat supplies, they can get stuck in this state, sometimes in odd places,” Ebony says.
“People will find bats on a wall and think it will go away, but it still sitting there a week later.”
From rescue to rehab via ICU
When Ebony is alerted about a bat in trouble she heads to the rescue equipped with a special first aid kit that contains a soft pouch, rubber bands and a mini-wheat bag.
“It’s important to start warming the bat straight away so that by the time I am home it will be warm enough to start fluid therapy (tiny amounts of fluids injected under the skin) and begin an assessment.”
Things can be touch and go for a recently rescued bat.
If it looks like it is strong enough to survive it will be placed straight into a humidicrib to regulate its temperature and given fluids twice a day.
“If I had a very critically ill bat that needed checking regularly through the night I would keep it set up in my bedroom,” she says. 
Microbats will often enter a state of torpor when injured.(Supplied: Ebony McIntosh)
The humidicrib stops the bat going into torpor, which is where the bats’ metabolic rate and physiological activity slow right down.
“[In torpor] the healing process stops, and they can’t metabolise medication. So, we have to keep them at about 32 degrees

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