I don't know a whole lot about bats, but I know enough to be "bat friendly," and I understand why they are beneficial to the ecosystem. I've lived in Houston or the surrounding area all of my life, and I can remember seeing bats for as long as I can remember. But just recently, it seems I hear about them more and more. I've got good friends and a sister who both are going through bat eradication programs in their respective houses right now, and so this has become a topic of conversation. It seems that an inordinatly high number of people seem to have similar stories in the Houston area right now.........more and more people are finding bats in their houses and garages. Are there more bats around, or are we just more atuned to them because of that kid who died of rabies after getting bit by one a while back? Or are there just a large number of houses in the area that are reaching that age where bats can gain easy entrance into them via holes in the cladding? One other quick question........I found a website that claims Houston has 11 species of bats and all of them are insect eaters. But I've seen bats at dusk get into my fig trees.........and something is definitely eating my figs, but I never see birds in there. I think we have some fruit eaters as well. Anyone else see anything like this?
I know that there are some environmentally friendly places that will get you bats to help you curb mosquito problems.
I don't get into all the fancy-schmancy double-walled things. Give me a heavy bat that has a balance point toward the end of the bat. And I like a tapered handle. I've done a lot of damage with my 3-year-old Easton Reflex. I like it better than bats that cost 5-times what it did. I wear out $20 wooden bats for BP and the cages as well. Oh, you were talking about the animal? Sorry, carry on.
i've never seen one single bat in houston in my life, well other than the zoo, so i can't help you out. yesterday i did see two coyotes down the street from my house looking through the trash. thought that was kinda neat.
I never saw bats in Houston but I've seen quite a few in Minneapolis. At my old house we had bats and my cat caught a couple. I had heard that many bats were endangered but its possible that conservation efforts have caused them to make a comeback.
I have a crazy bat story. I was watching TV, sitting on the couch being lazy one night. I noticed something black slowly crawling on the carpet right in front of me. Thinking it was a mouse, I got up to go get a pot from the kitchen to trap it in. I reached down, grabbed the pot and turned around to see a bat flapping its wings about 1/4 of an inch FROM MY FACE!! I dropped to the floor, screamed like a little girl, swung the pot in the air to get it to fly away. lol It left the kitchen, flew off into the living room, and landed on a couch pillow. I slowly went over and covered the pillow with the pot. I then took it outside and let it go. Bats are cool freaky little creatures.
Wouldn't it be cool if you caught one of those suckers and dip it in some experimental chemicals and have it accidentally bite you.. and the following morning you turned into Batman? Wait, Batman doesn't have any super power.
yeah..that happened to Jim Halpert I see bats all the time at dusk. Have had them swoop closer to me than I'm actually comfortable with. I know the house next door to mine has a bat house built on the back deck. But they've never been able to attract bats to live there.
Creed helped take care of that bat... off Meredith. Business School. What about a Louisville Slugger? EDIT: DAMN, weslinder beat me to it.
I used to work for an apartment management company. We had to take the roofs off a couple of buildings at one complex and rebuild them because of a bat infestation we could not eradicate. The city was going to condemn the property if we didn't. I wonder if you hear about bats more now simply because you know more property owners now (since you're older). I don't think bats bother anybody else.
I'm actually a bat fan (or bat supporter, I guess). My wife works for the College of Natural Sciences at UT, and we recently had a chance to tour the Bracken bat cave, which is just up the road from Natural Bridge Caverns. It houses the largest conentration of mammals on planet Earth: a colony of around 20-30,000,000 (depending on the season) Mexican free-tailed bats in one cave. By comparison, Austin's famous Congress Bridge colony is barely over 1,000,000. When the Bracken bats leave every night at dusk, it takes three to five hours for the whole colony to leave. Five solid hours of this: It's really amazing. They had a few satellite images showing the impact of the emergence on the state. The red blooms are bats in flight. Here's Texas at 6:15pm: And here it is at 8:01pm: Almost all of these bats come from Bracken cave. So it's really no surprise that cities as far as Houston or even El Paso report numerous bat sightings. Texas is Grand Central Station for bats. http://www.batcon.org/bracken/brackenShortClip.wmv
