I saw my first bat of the year not long ago. Actually, it was a picture of a bat. Someone had found a little brown bat hanging on the wall of their shed, behind a door that had been propped open. The bat must have thought it was a good place to nap for the day, after a hard night of trying to eat all the bugs. But at least I got to see a picture of one.
Little brown bats, which is the actual name of most of the bats we have around here, which is fitting, since they are brown… and little… have been hard to come by around this area for a couple years now. I know of several places where they used to live that are no longer available for bats. Mostly old buildings that have been torn down over the years. But the big the was the fungus that produces white nose syndrome. That particular disease almost wiped them out.
I know that some may not be big fans of bats. They don’t have a great reputation, probably because of Dracula, but they really aren’t that bad. They don’t want to get tangled in your hair. They don’t want to bite you. They may carry the occasional nasty disease like rabies, but while I like them, I am quite willing to watch them from a distance, so that’s not even a big factor. The big thing is, they eat bugs. I tend to think that anything that eats bugs is okay by me.
So the lack of bats is a bit disturbing, since it means the bug population has fewer things eating it.
I have mentioned before, I think, that not long ago I would wander out to watch an old building or two in my neighbourhood just as it started to turn to dusk, just to watch the bats head out for the night. It was pretty cool to sit and watch hundreds of bats head off to do some serious damage to the mosquito population. And other bugs.
Not only that, it wasn’t uncommon to see them swooping past street lights, nabbing a few snacks along the way. It just made me feel good to know they were trying to keep things from biting me. And I miss that.
There have been reports that the numbers seem to be making a comeback of sorts, although there still don’t seem to be too many around. But it was nice to see at least one hanging out around this area. Hopefully we see more.