Bats

[ksmith]

The first and only time I recall seeing bats was when I visited Austin in iirc 1997. alfreda89 took me to see the Congress Bridge Bats emerge for their nightly foray.

That was a lotta bats.

I sat out on the deck this evening and watched the sun set. As dusk fell and a single star flickered, I spotted a small shape flitting back and forth at treetop height. Every so often, another shape would join it, and they would both dart and dip through the branches. Little eggs with stubby wings. I am pretty sure they were bats, the first ones I've ever seen around here, out for an evening bug hunt. No clue what kind they were. Possibly little brown bats, which are common just about everywhere.

Bats eat mosquitoes. Bats are cool.

Comments

[fireun.livejournal.com]

I love bats.

Not so much in my house- I have too many memories of growing up in a rabies-rich area and bats are a very strong vector for that disease- and the rickety old house I lived in for a couple years was rotten with little brown bats that would hang from things like the shower curtain at inconvenient times.

But bats in general are amazing to watch. Where I live now, if you time it just right and go for an evening walk, the sky is riddled with them as they come to eat all the bugs that hang around by the river.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

You might consider putting up a bat house, see if you can get a colony going. Better than a bug zapper.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Though I have a mental image of Gaby considering a little brown bat as a winged chipmunk.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

That's a concern, in addition to rabies. The vast majority of animals that test positive for rabies in Illinois are bats, and while my pups have been vaccinated, I haven't been. I am happy to have the bats around, killing skeeters and embellishing the night sky. But I would be reluctant to provide them a safe haven...which wouldn't really be safe given the presence of the Small Assassin.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

In Texas, at least, rabid bats are normally discovered as obviously sick bats on the ground or another surface in daylight. They don't try to attack (though they may bite if handled.) Do not touch. Call your local animal control (or call ahead of time for advice on what to do with a bat on the ground, which is usually "Do not touch. Call animal control." They will take the bat for testing to see if it's rabies or something else. There's another bat disease now, a fungal disease (if the bat has a white or gray funny-looking nose, it's probably got that) fatal to bats and not to anything else we know of yet. But a sick bat is something not to touch. If you must move it, scoop with a shovel.

And you probably knew that already.