P80311KHe or she; let’s just go with ‘it’ – has no name that I am aware of. It might be an acquaintance of Pepe. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/pepe/ )

It showed up in a conference room at work, and needed to be removed. The young lady who found it motionless on the floor did not want to handle it, so I took it outside and laid it on top of a utility panel, hoping that it might fly away. After only a few minutes, it was gone. I did not see a cat or anyone else who would have eaten it; so I am hopeful that it flew into a nearby riparian area to find some insects to eat, and to recover from being trapped inside.

I have no idea what happened to it, or how it ended up in such a bad situation. It was on the floor below a skylight window, like a dazed bird who crashed into the glass while trying to fly through the window. However, bats do not try to fly through closed windows. Their sonar informs them that the glass is there, even if they do not see it. Someone I was working with at the time said that it might have been trying to find a way out near the window just because of the sunlight there, and because it was higher than the other windows. Perhaps it just got exhausted while flapping around trying to find an exit.

Bats are mysterious here. I do not even know what kinds of bats live here. They are nocturnal, like Pepe, so they do what they do while most of us are not up and about or outside to see them doing it. Even those who are out at night do not see much of what bats do because nighttime is rather dark. I think that is what makes it nighttime. Bats are dark too, so are not easy to see without sunlight.

I know that the small bats like this one eat mosquitoes. Since mosquitoes follow people about, and bats follow mosquitoes, bats seem to follow people. We see them every once in a while as they dart about. Yet, almost all of their activity goes unnoticed, even if it is only a few feet away. They are small, dark, silent and fast. Even if we are not aware that they are about, and they are not very concerned about us, they make our time in the garden after sundown a bit more tolerable by eliminating so many of the otherwise bothersome mosquitoes.

In other regions, and perhaps here as well, bats interact with plant life as well. Some eat soft fruit, such as prickly pear, and distribute the tiny seeds within. They do what birds do for brightly colored berries. Since bats are not impressed with bright colors, the fruits that want to attract them use sweet fragrance and flavor. Unlike small brightly colored berries that birds eat whole, fruit that is designed for bats is large and squishy, with tiny seeds dispersed somewhat homogeneously throughout the pulp, so that small bats can eat the seeds just by taking small bites of fruit.

Bats also pollinate some types of flowers. Many types of cacti that live in desert regions bloom at night while their flowers are less likely to be desiccated by harsh desert weather, and also while nocturnal pollinators are active. Flowers that rely on moths are smaller and paler, although they are brightly colored and patterned with ultraviolet color that moths can see. Those that rely on bats for pollination are wide and faced upward so that bats can land on them if they want to take their time eating the abundant sweet nectar. Sweet floral fragrance is easy for bats to follow.P80311K+

33 thoughts on “Bat”

  1. Do be careful around bats — they tend to spread rabies. A physician friend picked up a bat that landed in his house — animal control told him to get rabies shots, even though he had not been bitten. His wife decided to pet the bat on the head — she had to have the shots too!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  2. I love bats and have moved a few.. I never got rabies or germs or cooties or turned into a vampire. since I would scoop them up on paperplates or whatever (and often have latex gloves in the coat just to in case of stuff requiring them) and then put the bats in an out-of-the-way place for them to get their composure and move on. They seem to like being behind a building or under a little bridge or somewhere, and often they get disturbed if construction or noise etc. happens in their turf.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      2. It looked so sickly and weak that I expected it to expire right there. I am pleased that it is gone. I don’t know why I worry about a bat. There are thousands of them here, millions of them in the area, and billions of them about. I also know that each of them eventually die naturally. I suppose that I just do not want to know about it.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. They are very fragile-looking since they fly, I think. I am also glad not to see actual injury or harm, since I would want to over-caretake. Two of our squirrels here have the results of what looks like terrible accidents, and yet both are lively and well and run around and eat all the food. One has what appears to be a blinded eye, and the other has such a severe nicely-healed but bald wound on neck and back that it maybe got caught in rocks, or caught by a predator and dropped or something, and if I had seen either of them with blood and guts on, I would have fretted. I am much happier to see them afterwards, doing fine!

        Liked by 1 person

      4. I will be writing about Timmy the sickly baby deer soon. I took him off of Highway 9 to die out of the way, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved into my home and garden and would not go away. I really dislike deer! I thought that when he got big enough, he would just get barbecued and stewed and such, but that never happened.

        Like

      6. Timmy certainly did not intend to be mean. He just liked to eat my roses, and my apricot tree, and everything else in the garden. He did not understand how important they were to me.

        Liked by 1 person

      8. Someone told me that yucca repels deer because they perceive it to be something that will poke them. The giant yucca has soft and harmless leaves, but seems to keep deer at a distance anyway. They are very easy to grow from cuttings of the big canes. Timmy stayed away from them.

        Liked by 1 person

      10. Oh, it was not a solution. They only protected part of the garden that was already outfitted with them. I could not grow them fast enough to protect what he was eating outside of that area. He eventually moved away up the mountain as he grew up. I really dislike deer, and I really dislike deer who eat my roses, but I was sad to see him going out into the world.

        Like

  3. Flying foxes can be a big problem here. They roost in huge colonies and are noisy and smelly. They defoliate trees. At one time there were estimated to be up to 20 000 of them in Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, and a noise campaign was set up to encourage them to move away, but eventually they started coming back. They’re a protected species, but most people dislike them.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. The bats here have learned that the insects congregate around the street lights at night and if you sit quietly on a porch or in your car you can watch them flittering around the street lights catching the bugs. I’m glad you got the bat back outside and hopefully it will be back to it’s job of eating lots of bugs.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Awww. Glad you put him outside and gave him a chance to live. I found one sleeping inside a patio umbrella as I opened it. Freaked me out!!! Luckily he stayed put and didn’t attack me. Tapping a broom handle on the backside of the umbrella woke him up and he flew off. Hope he stays away. Now I know to be really careful when opening the patio umbrellas!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. What?! Are bats that important? I am not aware of anything like that here. There are wildlife rescues, but they are for larger animals that get lost in town, like deer, skunks, coyotes, foxes and such. Sometimes, they get stuck with squirrels and rats and such. I can not imagine why anyone would want to rescue a rat, but some people do.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    1. There was a small hole in the cliff next to Zayante Creek at the bottom of my garden where I saw bats coming from one evening. I saw one, then another, then a few more, . . . . then they just kept coming! It was sort of creepy! I can not help but wonder what is inside of that tiny hole. Does it open up into a cave? Is it Hell? Oh my!

      Like

      Reply

  9. There is a very famous bridge in Austin, TX, known as the “bat bridge, where large numbers of Mexican Split Tailed Bats sleep on summer nights. At dusk, they ALL come out like a huge puff of smoke, and spread out over Central TX to eat millions of pounds of bugs. It’s great entertainment to sit on the lawn by the south end of the Congress Street Bridge to watch the bats come out — the exodus lasts about 1/2 hour each evening.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment