News from Bird Bottom Farm Bats Get a Bad Rap

News from Bird Bottom Farm
Bats Get a Bad Rap

By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury

Halloween reminded me once more of what a bad rap bats get, not only by women screaming that the creatures will get in their hair (I have never known anyone this happened to), but in being portrayed as evil creatures of the night. Yes, they are creatures of the night, and we should all be delighted to have them working their tiny wings off every warm night come spring and summer.

I have never had a "pet" bat, but it is not something I would rule out—as I had a pet white rat who got raised on a doll's bottle when I brought home an expectant mother rat over Christmas holidays when I was in high school. The little fellow I raised would have died without special care. Instead, he lived four years in a specially made cage, one end enclosed and the other end wire mesh. He liked being carried around, and scared any visitors half to death. Oh well, there aren't too many animal nuts like me.

Any warm night out in fairly open country at about twilight is the time to watch the sky and see the bats flying acrobatically—no pun intended—as they catch the insects which otherwise would be looking for us to bite. Bats eat hundreds of mosquitoes and other unpleasant biting insects, so they do us a great service. Yet, what do we call anyone we think is a little "off base"? Batty.

Some years ago we heard banging in the heat duct in the cellar. To our dismay we found a bat had gotten, somehow, into the duct and then into one of the "U" shaped pieces which went around a beam. The bat couldn't make it up the steep slope to get into the straightaway part of the duct. So, I got out a screwdriver and took the duct apart while my husband held a towel and grabbed the little fellow when he or she was in the open. Then out the door and off to join the other bat-workers in the night sky. Of course, we couldn't get the duct back together and had to have the plumbers come for that the next day.

A few years ago I was planting bushes near the front of the house and found myself almost nose to nose with a nest of bats. They are creatures of the night and do not come out in the daylight. They—probably about five in the nest tucked under the bottom clapboard—squeaked at being approached, but I spoke softly and left them in peace.

The same sort of fear gets aroused in humans not only by bats but also by black cats, and they are both depicted with witches and grotesque pumpkins on the 31st of October. I have two black cats that are just like other cats—they have favorite places to curl up, and one of them waits patiently each day for his dollop of cottage cheese. (It has to be Guida's—he won't touch any other brand. Maybe he could be a friend of Guida's "Super Cow.")

Whether it is the black of black cats, black bats, or the black cloaks of witches—somehow the shadowy appearance scares people. Now, however, it is not black which is terrorizing some folks; it is white anthrax powder. I wonder if some good will come out of this scare and make folks realize that the darkness of bats, witches and cats has nothing to do with evil at all. Time will tell!