May 09, 2002 - Give the poor bat a breakMay 9, 2002 • The Suffolk Times
G
ive the poor. bat
a break
most people have little respect for bats. Occasionally they find their way Into a house, then things get a bit out of hand
because of old wives' tales of bats getting tangled In one's hair and other ridiculous tales, none of which are true. They
are most useful in controlling pesky insects, which they detect by uttering high - pitched sounds. This photo shows our
common brown bat.
I'LL BET YOU HAVEN'T SEEN a bat
lately. Tony has. He called from
Vermont on Saturday morning to ask
how to get rid of one. Seems he was
up in his cabin for a few days —
where, by the way, it was snowing —
and he found a bat clinging to the fire-
place screen. Not knowing much about
bats, he was concerned it might cause
him some difficulty if he tried to move
it. Hence his call to me.
What I suggested he do was to get
something like a
FOCUS
shoebox and get
it over the bat
ON
and with the
NATURE
cover nudge the
bat into the box
by Paul
and cover it.
Stoutenburgh
Hopefully that is
what he did and
then put the bat outside,
making both
it reminded me of another bat story
when Helen called up to say they had
a bat on their ceiling fan. It seems each
year we get a call about a bat that has
somehow gotten into someone's home.
Sure enough, we went over to her
place and clinging to the fan was a lit-
tle brown bat. We removed it in a sim-
ilar way and put it outside.
From our editor, Jeff, a call came
one evening telling about a bat prob-
lem he had. He wanted to know if I
would come over and help, which I
gladly did. When I arrived the family
was outside and their bat problem was
in a fish net, all tangled up. They had
been resourceful enough to capture
the little brown bat in a net, but now
they were concerned they might not
be able to get it out without having it
bite them. That could be a problem.
But with Barbara's cautious hands and
a little luck it was untangled and soon
on its way to freedom.
The point of the story is that bats
are not dangerous and won't come
after you or get tangled up in your
hair: those are old wives' tales. Bats
are very important creatures in keep-
ing down our insect population, partic-
ularly the pesky mosquitoes.
You can see these little fellows fly-
ing, usually in open areas and some-
times in the woods, just about an hour
before it gets dark and an hour before .
sunrise. Summer evenings we see them
working over the pasture in an erratic
flight, using their high - pitched sounds
Isplit o locate insects. Once they're located,
the bats swoop in and pick them up.
This is usually done using their wings
as scoops. Then they bend over and
grab the insect and eat it all in one
second.
Brown bats hibernate in the winter;
this can be in an unused chimney,
which probably accounts for the bat
on the fireplace screen of my friend in
Vermont. They also hiber-
nate in buildings and caves;
some of the caves in the
north play host to literally
thousands of these bats. We
also find some of them
hibernating, as I mentioned
before, individually right
around our homes here on Long
Island.
The big thing to remember is, of
course, that they are perfectly harm-
less if left alone. There is always that
Possibility of any "wild" animal biting
you. So never pick up a bat or any
wild animal because if it lets you get
that close, there is probably somethinf
wrong with it. We havens had any
cases of rabies on Long Island, but
there's always a possibility t at some-
day we might.
Bats haven't arrived yet this year in
our area because there are not many
flying insects for them to feed on. As
soon as you see swallows, who also
live on flying insects, you can bet the
bats will not be far behind. So we'll
have to wait a few weeks for more of
the insects to start moving.
Then we'll see our bats once
again swooping over the
pasture and doing their job
of keeping the insects down.
As we relayed these bat
stories to Don this past
Saturday morning, he told us
of an interesting experience he and his
wife, Sue, had with a bat. Up at night
with only small nightlights on, Don
thought he saw something fly by the
door but thought it must have just
been a shadow. When it happened a
second time, he woke Sue up and as
they sat in bed with only the nightlights
on, they both saw this flying object go
by, first one way and then the other.
They wondered if it could be a bird
Bats are
perfectly
harmless if
left alone.
that had gotten into the house and was
flying about, but no, it was a bat.
They put lights on and headed
downstairs, where the bat followed
them. Now with the bright lights on,
the bat became quite excited, flutter-
ing about and flying in all directions.
While they sat down to think about
their next move, the bat slowed and
finally landed on the wall. Don got a
large plastic container and placed it
over the bat and then slid a flat object
underneath it and nudged it into the
container. It was promptly put out the
door. Now all were happy and they
went back to bed.
Some years ago a lady from
Mattituck called us to say there was a
bat lying in her driveway. What should
she do? Not knowing how to advise
her, we headed to Mattituck and, sure
enough, there was a red bat lying in
the driveway. On further investigation
we found it to be carrying three young.
They had attached themselves to the
mother bat and she was trying to carry
them with her as she flew. Evidently
the three were just too big and heavy
for her to fly with, so she was ground-
ed on the driveway.
We picked the bat up with her young
still attached and brought her back
home, where we fed her small pieces of
raw hamburger. All the while she con-
tinued to nurse the three young. We
put her, along with the young, out in
the garden tool shed, where eventually
they took off. To this day, whenever we
see bats circling our back pasture in the
evening, we think some of the family
we helped take care of might now be
catching insects just for us.
We actually have two bat houses
attached to a water tank out by our
garden for the bats to use, but we
haven't ever looked inside to see if we
have any takers. Would be interesting
to know if they work. People actually
o put up bat houses so that they will
tay around their homes to help rid the
rea of pesky insects. I