Meet Brownie

There was quite a bit of lunchtime excitement today when Katie (the tall intern) found a bat in a plastic display box on top of the refrigerator.


After putting a cover on the top of the box, snapping some photos, and tapping the box to see if the bat was still alive we moved the box out of the house.


As we started relocating the box, it was clear Brownie (named by Alicja the other intern) was definitely alive. We put the box on its side under one of the hemlock trees in the back yard. Brownie perked up pretty quickly and crawled out of the box and started climbing up the tree. And that is where we left our new friend, who will hopefully get some sleep before sunset and not find his (or her) way back into Willow Hall.


We think Brownie is a Little Brown Bat and are trying to figure out how it got into the house. In the meanwhile we will also be disinfecting the kitchen even though Brownie seemed healthy.

Do you have a bat story? Share it with us in the comment section!

Little Steps

Our summer interns have "greened" Willow Hall a little bit more by bringing in hand towels for our kitchen and bathrooms. Before we had been using paper towels. To be clean the staff take turns bring the towels home to be washed once a week. Reducing our paper towel usage means saving trees, the water and energy used to make and ship the product, and less garbage in landfills. (Though yes, we could probably compost the paper towels instead.)

And two of our interns carpool to work to save gas and the small paychecks we give them. Also, if you hire environmental students, give us a call, we have two awesome college graduates looking for full time jobs at the end of the summer!