In keeping with the spirit of recent events, I bring you...
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... bats, bats, and lolbats!
If you were ever wondering whether or not I am barking moonbat crazy, well, wonder no more. I have adored bats for as long as I can remember. They are cute. And fascinating.
First, warm wishes for those protesters who are braving the cold in Inner Siberia Wisconsin and related environs:
When I was a kid, growing up in Texas, a lot of our family vacations were camping trips around the Southwest. Two places where we made pilgrimages just to see the bats were the Congress Ave Bridge in Austin and Carlsbad Caverns:
And you thought Democratic legislators were good at mass exodus...
Finally, given that we've been tracking the spread of revolts from Egypt to the American Midwest, did you know that there's a whole field called aeroecology and that they're now using NEXRAD weather radar and stormchaser radar to estimate bat populations? Me neither:
Do we live in a cool country or what?
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We recently got an exhibit of vampire bats
At the local zoo. I think they are so adorable.
who needs teeth, when just a
who needs teeth, when just a handful of fangs will do the job?
when i was a kid, we weren't allowed to stay inside and watch a lot of tv, but dark shadows was one of my favorite shows. and i couldn't put down interview with the vampire. i can see why people tend to make the various connections: vampires <-> vampire bats <-> all bats <-> generalized fear.
Fangs for the memories!
Phyllis Diller's husband was named Fang, IIRC. There's not nearly enough Phyllis Diller on YouTube. I have her book on housekeeping, which I follow religiously....
Bats are terribly cute
I love to see them hanging upside down, all wrapped in themselves, a caver's delight.
You're a spelunker?!
Not me, but you should post on it. It sounds neat.
caver's delight
most of the caves we have here in this part of almost-alabama are the ones in underground springs and rivers. our local bats live in trees and bat boxes, so not much chance to see anything beyond the occasional odd shadow flitting around the sky at dusk.
And up in the Northeast, bats are dying of white nose disease--
Many of the huge bat populations are dying off, apparently a cave at a time, as the white nose disease (or syndrome) seems to do its damage when the bats are hibernating. I understand this has now spread to the upper Midwest and elsewhere.
The result is losing huge numbers of mosquito eaters -- thus standing a good chance of getting more mosquito bites. Oh, and losing a precious part of our wildlife and unbalancing nature.
List of articles.
Mysterious ailment killing off bats. Mysterious ailment killing off honey bees. What's next?
I always wanted to be
I always wanted to be reincarnated as a dolphin, but I think now I'll wait until the humans are destroyed by global warming.
that's my favorite comment on this article so far. i am so hoping that their deaths don't get written off to 'mysterious ailments.' but yeah, what's next?
Thanks, Hipparchia
"He began to say the poem over to himself; he said in a soft contented whisper,
"He tried to think of what came next, but he couldn't remember. It was about fur, but he couldn't remember the words that went with it. He went back to the beginning. He said,
"but before he could get any further he thought: 'I wish I'd said we sleep all winter.' His eyes were closed; he yawned, and screwed his face up, and snuggled closer to the others."
the bat poet!
i'd never heard of it before. i'm going to have to see if i can find it somewhere.
holy Megachiroptera, batman!
i once lived in a basement apartment in a house in the student section of a college town. my bedroom didn't have a covering on the ceiling. so i hung some fabric (hippy that i am) to the wood slats on it, as a cover. one night, i woke up to a weird squeaking noise. the lights were off and i was in bed. but i could perceive the fabric... moving. undulating. suddenly a bat exploded out of the fabric cover, and flapped around my head for a while before flying off into the other area and eventually getting chased out the window by a housemate. i flipped my cookies. since then, altho i know bats eat my #1 enemy of the sumer (mosquitoes) i have been somewhat uneasy about them. "cute" isn't a word i describe them by, having not felt that cuteness on that fateful night. ;-)
50 lashes with a soft batwing for me
for taking so long to reply...
i had a similar experience, and rather than turning me off of bats, it has turned me off of living in the cold frozen north... but we captured the bat that was flying around the house, using a dip net and the curtain. we carefully wrapped the curtain around the net, with the bat inside the net, carefully carried the kitncaboodle outside, and carefully unwrapped it all in the front yard, only to find... no bat.
never again will i live in a rickety old farmhouse in the midwest.