skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Bats in the Belfry
I was flipping through a Plow and Hearth catalogue and came across a Bat House. This catalogue is just chock-full of interesting and mostly useless information. According to them, a single bat consumes up to 3,000 insects every night. Now in LA (Lower Alabama) I’ve seen mosquitoes grow to be 5” long and weigh up to half a pound. I’m sure you don’t believe that, but I know it to be true. I'm also pretty sure that my backyard is the playground for at least 3,000 of these monsters and probably more. Anyway, this bat house will hold approximately 20 bats, so for $39.95 plus shipping and handling, I feel sure my back yard mosquito problem could be solved. The only draw back is that I just don't love bats. There doesn't seem to be anything even remotely appealing about them. They are leathery, toothy, hairy and scary. I’m terrified of a bat flying too close to my head because when I was about 8 or so, my friend told me that I better watch out, because she heard they had been known to swoop down pretty low and could accidentally get caught in a person's hair. Unfortunately, she told me this on the night we were standing outside at dusk, watching a group of bats catching their dinner and even more unfortunately, I had a lot of long hair. I was afraid. I wasn’t paralyzed with fear however, because I took immediate action by zigzagging my way back to the house with my head bent down and my arms covering my hair. Everybody knows a moving target is harder to hit. My target was the front door. I imagined sitting at the kitchen table while my Mom used the "good hair cutting scissors" to extricate this writhing bat from my long hair as it dug its claws into my scalp. Maybe I’ll just stick with the Citronella candles.
p.s. Please don't ask me why I have a Plow and Hearth catalogue because I have no idea. Also, it is of interest that I found out that chock-full is a hyphenated word and that the word "catalogue" can also be spelled "catalog", but apparently only within the confines of the borders of the USA. You learn something new every day.
3 comments:
Can this be? A brillance update, sweet.
Bats are not cuddle, and are kinda gross, but they're helpful.
Also, I think that hair myth went the way of the dodo with the big hair of the 80's. It isn't too hard to imagine a bat getting stuck in the hair of some 80's girl wearing a ratt tee shirt with her pegged jeans.
I get that catalog(ue?) in the mail now and again, too.
Funny bat story - I was walking the dogs up at the cabin at dusk over the weekend and out of nowhere this little bat came by, apparently disappointed that the moving objects his sonar found were too bit for his snacking abilities (appetite?)
Aww... bats.
Post a Comment