And then giggled.
He had found a small bat resting in a tree.
Small asked if he could keep it as a pet. I don't know about here, but in Kansas you had to get a series of rabies shots to be allowed to have a bat sanctuary. I told Small, no. They fly over our heads every night, eating up those nasty misquitos.
6 comments:
Great critters to have to help get rid of the bugs around the holler.
I think that is a big brown bat, which, contrary to their name, are less than 6" long. There is such thing as a little brown bat, but they live in a few very specific caves and are endangered.
One big brown bat can eat 3000 mosquitoes per 24hrs. Because of that appetite, and their insectivore diet, they are really hard to keep as pets. They find those insects with their echolocation system, and are so good at it that they can find something smaller than a human hair, and detect the difference between an insect and the leaf it is sitting on.
Like every other mammal, bats _can_ get rabies, but they don't become aggressive when they are ill. If they did, one sick bat would wipe out a colony.
I think their wings are interesting -- they are formed of dermis skin (feels just like the back of your hand) spread between their elongated finger bones. Their thumbs have a one claw each, which they use for crawling up.
Sally H (former VA nature centre volunteer)
How about suggesting he build bat houses to help them out?
I like bats. They swoop around the meadow at evening time in the summer and eat the bugs.
Let the boy have a bat. You want them around though... they are awesome. We love ours down here.
Bats are cool. We have gobs of bats here, we watch them in the early stages of night. Kathi thinks they are cute. I just like that they eat the skitters.
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