Misunderstood Bats

Bats are misunderstood. People often think the they are ugly, will get caught in your hair and drink blood and have rabies a lot. Most of this is not true. Vampire bats do drink blood though they only drink livestock blood and do not hurt the animals.The bats only make a tiny bite and drink a tiny bit of blood before leaving. When the animals wake up they are not even itchy from were the bat bit them. A vampire bat is the only type of bat that drinks blood. A bat is just as likely to have rabies as any other animal. People tested to see how many bats do have rabies and only 10 percent of the tested bats had rabies. Any one bat is less likely to have rabies then a skunk or raccoon. Bats will not get caught in your hair. They can see fine in the dark especially with echolocation. And they are very shy of people. Bats are very cute. People probably think they are ugly because they think other bad things about bats and have never seen one up close. But if you look at a bat up close it is actually very cute.

In fact bats actually help us. they help us by pollinating plants, eating insects and spreading seeds. Actually we need bats. There would be to many bugs and some plants such as mangoes, bananas and guavas would not be pollinated if we did not have bats.

 Here are some pictures of cute bats. Daubenton's Bat (picture from static.guim.co.uk):

Flying Fox (picture from Cute Bats tumblr):

How it Started

Florida Bonnetted Bat courtesy US FWS

In March of 2014 it dawned on me that:

1.     I was uncomfortable about certain conditions in the world,
2.     My 8 year-old granddaughter Liel also had concerns about certain conditions in the world,
3.     Maybe we could work together on a project of her choosing to make something better in this world.

I live in Ojai, CA. Liel lives in Valley Cottage, NY.

In late March I called, and asked Liel if she would like to work on a project with me. Got to admit, I expected a yes and I expected, given her life’s interest, that she would opt for improving conditions for bats throughout the world.

Right. She immediately said, "yes!" However, instead of an immediate answer about what to work on, she said she would give that some thought. A few days later she told me that she would like to work on caring for bats!

It was a GO!