Month October 2015

Brownie’s Halloween

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. I would like to dedicate this week’s blog to a boy who passed away this week. He went to my school and although I didn’t know him personally, I knew of him. My sister knew him and said he was a very kind and caring person and everyone is very sad. So, Daniel, this is for you. You will be missed.   Hi everyone! I hope everyone has been enjoying Bat Week! Happy Halloween! Remember to be safe tonight while trick or treating. Someone sent me a cute picture this week and I thought I’d share it with you. I’m sorry, I don’t know the original source of this, but apparently Small Fact Frog is full of wonderful knowledge that he occasionally shares with people on the internet. This time, he shared a batty fact that I think shows just how awesome and amazing bats can be. And now, since it is Halloween, Brownie the bat (remember him?) wanted to write a story about his costume. Brownie’s Halloween Brownie was really happy, tonight was Halloween. His favorite costume of all was when he went as a human, but he wanted to be something else this year and couldn’t decide what. He was flapping home from school one night while thinking about this dilemma. He landed in his cave and put his school stuff down. He remembered having a box full of costumes in his room and rushed up the stairs to look inside it. He flipped open the box and looked […]

Bat Week 2015

Bat Week is here!! This is your chane to get involved in bat conservation and help with a world record attempt! Find a site near you and help build one, or more, of 5,000 bat boxes on October 31! There are lots of other things you can do to help bats during Bat Week. There is lots more information at batweek.org. If you’re on Facebook, show your support by changing your profile picture for the week . Just click the widget below!

Rembrandts of the night

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. As you all know, I went camping last weekend. I had a great time, but it was really cold! I am a little disappointed that I didn’t see any interesting animals. I really wanted to see some bats. I barely saw squirrels. I think the animals were all staying hidden because it was so ridiculously cold. And, maybe, just maybe, we were a bunch of loud and scary girls that they didn’t want to visit. I want to remind everyone that next week is Bat Week. Don’t forget about the world record attempt being made on the 31st. If you can, please work on building a bat house that day. I hope you all participate in Bat Week and have some fun. You could dress up as a cute little bat, or wear something bat related. I got some new batty socks today that I’ll be able to wear during Bat Week. Maybe if we all do batty things next week, people will realize how awesome bats are and they’ll start celebrating as much as they celebrate Shark Week. That’s right, the bats are still a little jealous of the sharks. And now for something really cool…A few days ago, I was talking with Mrs. Sturges (Save Lucy’s President) and she told me about something I think you should all know about too.  She was talking about bat enrichment and how difficult it is to give enrichment to our local insectivore […]

A-Camping We Will Go

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I am very happy because I am going to be going camping this weekend! I am very excited because I will be in the woods and I might get to see some bats. It’s going to be cold, though, which makes me sad because the bats might not want to come out for very long. I wouldn’t want to be cold if I were them either, which is why I’m packing fleece, fleece and more fleece. Even if I don’t get to see any bats, I’ll at least be able to talk to my fellow campers about them. Most of the people I’m camping with don’t feel too comfortable around bats, so I’ll just have to alleviate some fears. I really do hope I see some. It would make the freezing cold a little more bearable. I wanted to know what kind of bats live where I am going, so I did some research. One of the bats that live there (around Harrisonburg, VA) is the Eastern Small-footed bat. It doesn’t live where I live, so it will be a brand new bat for me, if I see one. I think I might have written about them before. I love the name “small-footed bat!” I think it makes them sound adorable. The Eastern Small-footed bat is the smallest bat in the eastern US. It is only 2 7/8 – 3 ¼ inches long. It has chestnut brown fur with some black […]

Get ready for Bat Week!!

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! All the little bats are excited because it’s almost Bat Week. Bat Week is an international celebration of all things bats and will be from October 25-31. Save Lucy is one of the organizations involved, so you know all our furry little friends are very happy. One of the ways that Bat Week will be celebrated this year is by making bat houses. More bat houses means more places for bats to live. More places for bats to live means more adorable pups trying (and sometimes failing, gracefully of course) to fly. People from all over North America are going to be making bat houses on October 31. They are trying to make a world record for the most bat houses made in a day. The goal is to make 5,000 new houses, so if you are available on October 31, please sign up for an event near you. For more information, you can go here. http://batweek.org/ If you can’t make a bat house, there are many other things that people can do to help bats. You can turn off lights at night (please see one of my first blogs for more information about why that’s important). You can also keep your cats inside. You can speak up for bats and tell your friends how cool they are. I’m sure everyone has heard of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” It’s important to all animals including bats and humans and it’s an easy way […]

Viva Argentina!

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. It’s been a very rainy one here, and it looks like we’re going to get lots more rain. If this doesn’t stop, I’m going to have to build an ark for all my batty friends. I promised last week that I would write about an Argentinian bat and I think I found a very cute one. Of course, all of them were cute, but since Halloween is coming up I thought it would be nice to write about the white-winged vampire bat. It is soooooo cute! The white-winged vampire bat is tiny. It’s only about 3.3 inches long and doesn’t have an external tail. The adults weigh about 30-45 grams. The fur is a shiny claylike color, light brown, or a dark cinnamon brown. The edges of the wings are obviously white. The wing membrane between its 2nd and 3rd fingers is white too. They have a cute little thumb that has a pad under it. One thing I thought was interesting is that the white-winged vampire bat is the only bat known to have 22 permanent teeth. The other two vampire bats only have 20 teeth. Everyone knows that vampire bats feed on blood, but they don’t often feed on human blood, so there is no need to be scared of them. White-winged vampire bats drink blood from the feet of birds. You can read more about this cute little bat here. So, this Halloween (only 28 days away!) when […]