A woman was sitting on a hay bale watching her horse get groomed when, out of nowhere, something crawled out from beneath her. The tiny animal had all sorts of hay and gunk stuck to his body, making him unrecognizable at first glance.

“She thought he was a frog at first,” Sam Sawyers, owner of SamBee’s Bat Care, told The Dodo.

SAMBEE’S BAT CARE

The struggling animal turned out to be a bat who’d gotten himself into quite a predicament. Luckily for him, the woman had already rescued a bat recently, Chewie, who was taken in by SamBee’s Bat Care. Knowing they could help him, the woman made sure the messy little bat, later named Mikey, ended up there too.

“Bless her, she drove 30 miles to bring him to us and rings regularly to see how they’re both doing,” Sawyers said.

When Mikey first arrived at the rescue, he was dehydrated, underweight and very stressed. It seems he’d gotten himself covered in something sticky and had been collecting everything his body came into contact with. His wings were stuck together, and one of his ears was stuck to his head.

After letting him decompress for a little while, his rescuers gave him a much-needed bath — which he actually seemed to love.

SAMBEE’S BAT CARE

“He was very patient and did a lot of relieved wing flapping once they were unstuck,” Sawyers said.

After his bath, Mikey finally looked like a bat again and was so happy to be clean and comfortable. He went into an incubator for 24 hours to fully dry off and is now doing incredibly well.

“He needs to gain a gram of weight, then he’ll go to flight school with Chewie to check they can fly strongly, and [then] they’ll be taken home and released together,” Sawyers said.