Aw!

[telophase]

batwrangler has wrangled yet another bat. Socute!

I got to pet a bat once. I took an ecology class in undergrad and the professor knew the people who owned the land where Bracken Bat Cave is. (It's owned now by Bat Conservation International.) We went here on a field trip and watched five million bats* spiral up out of this sinkhole in a big bat tornado. For, like, twenty solid minutes. The prof went down and caught one**, held it out and lectured to us on its anatomy, and let those of us who wanted to, pet it. It was very soft, like rabbit fur.

Someone's trip to Bracken Bat Cave.



* For once I was able to trump my dad. I phoned my parents that night and before I told them where I went, Dad said "I saw five bats on the pier tonight!" I said, "Dad, I saw five million."

** Not recommended if you don't know what you're doing. This is why I love hanging out with field biologists as I did growing up: you get to do all the stuff that isn't recommended, because they know how not to hurt you, themselves, or the animal in question. Except when the armadillo took a chunk out of my dad's thumb. XD

Comments

[camwyn]

Oh, wow. That all sounds so totally cool- I love bats. (I wouldn't want to touch one for fear of rabies, but if it could be guaranteed it was an okay bat, sure.) And the one in the picture is lovely.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I had no problem touching the one my prof caught, because it was in the air and one of a bunch of others. Individual bats on their own, or bats on the ground ... not touching and staying far away from. :)

Bracken Bat Cave is spiffy. In the tornado of bats, over the course of the 20 minutes we saw them, I spotted 5 white ones, presumably albinos.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

:O
Holy awesome batness!

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

I helped capture this bat out of a sea cave down in Dominica a couple of years ago (hence the bathing suit). You can clearly see why it's important to wear leather gloves when handling bats.

Fyi, there are three sets of hand in the picture - one person was holding the bat,one was tagging it, and one was collecting ectoparasites.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Awww, poor bat! Yeah, I think I'd be biting like mad, too. XD

[chisotahn]

The only bat experience I've ever had was that once, when I was a kid and we were living in the Netherlands, we found a very small dead one in the dirty laundry basket. No idea how he got there.

Well, and a few in the Carlsbad Caverns.