As you know if you visit my blog, I like to pass on tips I learn. Here is one that might come in handy, even though it's not related to JDeveloper or ADF.
Apparently in the winter time, bats find the chimney of our apartment a nice place to hide from the cold. In the six years we've lived in this apartment, we've had about six bats end up dropping out of the fireplace flue and into our front room where they understandably begin to panic and start flying in circles around the room. After the second bat visit, we understood where they were coming from and I jammed a block of styrofoam up into the flue to block their entry. Since we don't use the fireplace it wasn't any kind of inconvenience to us, and it generally worked to keep the bats on "their side" of the chimney. However, somehow the block of styrofoam changes position from time to time (perhaps due to wind?) and so the bat visits have continued from time to time. On each of the previous occasions then this occurred, I opened the windows and just waited until the poor, frightened bat found its way out -- which typically took a lot longer than you might think.
A couple weeks ago, my daughter -- who is by now used to the bat visits -- called from the front room while watching TV, "Daddy, there's a bat." Despite the furry, winged friend circling in a panic above her, she calmly just kept on watching her Brady Bunch episode. This time, I got sick of waiting for the bat to find its way out of the window so I came up with a technique that I hope didn't cause it too much trama. I had my wife bring me a bath towel, and I would flick the towel in the air like a sort of upside-down bull-fighter's "Ole!" movement of his cape, being careful to do it when the bat was rounding the corner on the far side of the room and heading back toward me. This of course got the back to turn back in a circular flight-path with a much smaller radius. After doing this flick trick enough times, I could see the bat was getting tired because he finally "landed" on the curtains for a breather. After he took off again, I remained persistent in my towel flicking to keep his flight path small (and never actually hitting the bat with the towel by design).
After a short while, the bat got so tired that he landed on the ground. At which point, I put a shoe box over him, slid a piece of cardboard under the box, carried it all outside and lifted the box again. Then he flew off into the night, unharmed.
Hoping this tip might someday come in handy to others, drop me an email if you have discovered a simpler technique to coax a circling bat out of your home.
11:46:46 AM 
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