Community Chat

[Andreatoo]

@on the bay 

I am fascinated by bats and have been for years! I think they're cool little creatures and yes environmentally necessary.

When I visited Austin nearly 30 years ago I made a point of doing the bats at dusk. My cousin who had been there his entire adult life had never bothered! Lol

Half 1 million female bats fly up from Mexico every year in April and have their babies under the Congress Street bridge and leave in October numbering about 1,000,000 and a 1/2! Every evening you can watch them as they come out from under the bridge at dusk. It's like they are choreographed! They take turns coming out 1 end, you can see them hovering waiting their turn, until the air is filled with Mexican free tails. It's definitely something to experience if you're ever in Austin during those months.

I watched a Jeff Corwin show years ago where he was visiting a bat sanctuary in New Zealand I believe it was. He rescued a young bat orphaned in the wild and was taking it back to the sanctuary. They were in the back of a jeep and cuddling!! I almost died! So cute. These were the really big fruit bats that they refer to as flying foxes

[on the bay]

@Andreatoo,

That must be incredible to watch! I never knew about that.

Bats can be very cute. They can't help it if "they have a face only a mother could love" lol.

I've learned to appreciate them through my youngest daughter who ever since she was young and wrote a detailed report about bats in third grade, has thought bats were unique,

special, valuable, and yes cute!

I remember asking her, so what made you want to do a report about bats honey? You know trying to be that openminded mom instead of feeling sort of Morticia-ish talking to little Wednesday!

Though she admits that there are some that are not so cute with as she says "a face only a mother could love."

I had one fly over me a few nights ago.

Loved your story!

Bats unite!

But really, "all creatures great and small"💞

[AngelPuppy1]

I'm having a really hard time thinking of baby bats as "pups"!  Yuck!  I know that bats are helpful to the enviroment but they all just give me the creeps and I don't want to be near any of them --- big or small!  Possums are very creepy looking but at least they don't fly and dart around your head! 

[on the bay]

@AngelPuppy1,

Lol! I get it You made me laugh this morning-cute post😄

[teganslaw]

I think baby bats are called "cute." How could someone dislike them? 

[MoJoV]

Ugliness and beauty are in the eye of the beholder.  All Nature's creatures have their jobs to do to keep our beautiful planet spinning. 

[dylanfan]

Possums eat tons of insects (and it may be literally tons)!

[candys mine]

Battons?

[77yangya]

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@SilleeMee wrote:

Possums look like rats to me. Some bats have dog faces which I think are cute, however, there are some very scary-looking bats, too...really scary.

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I think the dog faced bats you're thinking of are called fruit bats or flying foxes.  They're quite large and they think they play a role in the Ebola virus.  I doubt that they bother humans and that they eat fruit.

[Drythe]

Sign me up as a possum lover.  Anything that reduces the # of ticks is a GOOD thing.

They take such care of their babies.  We have one who lives under our back porch, must have been generations of them, but we only see one at a time.