I’ve been thinking about Bats for a good few weeks lately. I don’t know all that much about them except that we have around 17 or 18 different species in the UK and the most common one is the Pipistrelle bat.
Now a certain pest controller that I have close associations with ( Ahem!), had a call out to investigate sounds coming from someone’s attic. They thought they had wasps or even worse, the dreaded Rattus Norvegicus!
Now I’m sure it’s obvious to you all that bats are protected, at least in the UK, and removing them or worse killing them can land you with a hefty fine. Quite right too.This customer was really happy about the bats taking up residence and immediately wanted as much information about them as possible. There was a mention of her house becoming a heritage site or something…….. imagine how exciting that would be if you were living in a quaint little house that suddenly because of a few bats in your attic became just that little bit more ‘ je ne sais quoi’.
The very next day, my cousin in law posted on social media that she too had discovered bats in her very own attic! What? What is actually going on here? If this were the season to be jolly and bright you’d be forgiven for thinking that I was auditioning for the part of a certain Jim Carey’s role in a local theatre because I am so envious of these women and their attic bats I am resembling the exact shade of The Grinch!
I want bats
I want bats in my attic
I don’t have an attic but that’s entirely besides the point!
I always think that bats have been given a bit of a weird deal especially in literature/film. I mean they’ve been closely associated with the leader of the pale yet rather veiny group of people who sleep all day and play all night ……. Yup! Good old Count Dracula and his mates. Resident vampire master in Transilvania, known for occasionally holidaying in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast, and for turning himself into a bat when he needed to escape a sticky situation. I mean really??? I’ve been to Whitby loads and I have never once seen a vampire at all never mind a bat!
Don’t get me started on Bat sweets or decor for Halloween. How insulting.
And then we’ve got Batman. All the kids (and some adults), loved Batman right? With his bat cave and bat mobile and his cape and his torch that shone a bat in the sky and his special bat sound! And his very very strong muscular legs in those tights!!! And Christian Bale and Robert Patterson and …sorry, forgive me! Who’d ever want to be Robin with the slightly odder looking costume….. Red and Green should never be seen as my mother used to say .
Which brings me to my next bit. As a child if we were out late walking ( or even going from the car to the house), my mum would tell me to put my hood up so that the bats wouldn’t fly down and get tangled in my hair. I spent half my childhood with my hood pulled as tight as it could be by hands that were just as ridiculously covered up by pulling my coat sleeves right over them in case the bats got my hands too, whilst scanning the sky for these hair loving critters.How stupid was this? Considering that bats hibernate from late autumn to early spring!
Where we live now which is basically a field with trees we have seen bats flying about in the past but this year I haven’t noticed any which is really sad.
Bats are really cool actually. They are like the pest controllers of the sky as they eat 1000’s of insects in a night, they have ultrasonic squeaks, they can actually see, they do a fair bit of pollination ( tequila and chocolate benefit from bat pooh I believe), their acrobatic displays would put any Olympic gymnast to shame, they’re champions of our eco system. And we are adding to their decline. We are removing their natural habitats and interfering with their flight paths.The amount of false light we use (all the bright street lighting, house lights etc) is very damaging to them.
There’s an account on Instagram I follow aptly named ‘blinded by the night’ which highlights a project in Bristol about lights and the effect on bats. There’s lots of hints on how to help which can be applied everywhere and a blog which is really interesting. Another account I follow is ‘maid of bats’…. this is an account about a sort of bat rehab and the photos and videos are amazing .
These little furry winged mammals really do need our help in protecting their future. Information and fact sheets are easily available from the internet such as the British Bat Fact sheet, the National History museum has a good fact page and there are conservation groups which can be joined, like the Bat Conservation Trust.
Finally, maybe we could all do one little extra thing to help ….. turn out the lights!
Alison x
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