Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for May 26, 2021

Bats are beneficial to our eco systems they eat tons of flying bugs every night as do spiders that roam our homes I let them be it drives the wife crazy.

Right next to the commemorative statues to rabies and COVID-19. The Boll Weevil Monument is pretty cool though.

Bats are very important to the environment. They eat millions of disease- carrying mosquitos.

I’ve been binging on YouTube recently via my smartTV and for some reason I’ve been getting videos from a bat rescue place in Australia. Lotsa cute big eyes. Awww…

When you sprout arms and legs and catch supervillains, then I’ll make that statue.

Lets offer the bats a deal. We will leave you in peace if you will make a sincere effort to stay out of our buildings. We agree that we need to make it difficult for you to find a way in. But we will not try to systematically eliminate bats anywhere. In exchange, the bats must agree to gorge to utter satiation nightly on mosquitos or any other flying insect that bites humans. Agreed?

If they do get into your house somehow, confine them to one room and call Animal Control. Somebody will come and trap them and take them out and release them. (Stated from experience.)

I love bats for the very reasons this particular bat indicated. If not for bats, we would be overrun with insects.

They should erect a giant statue in honour of the contributions that bats have made, and it should be paid for by the companies that make surgical masks and hand sanitizer.

Must be evildoers.

I’ve made bat houses to keep them on my property. I only see them when they come out at dusk to eat bugs.

Part of my wife’s and my evening activities is to float in the pool at around sunset and watch the bats patrol the skies above us.

It’s all part of the show: sunset, frogs, crickets, owls …

Na na na na na na na Bat Bat!

Husband and I made a trip across country to visit Austin, TX and the bat colony under the Congress Ave. bridge. It was so awesome to watch them all come out in the evening to go on their nightly hunt. And we sat by the side of a river in the dusk for two hours, in the depths of summer, and never saw a single mosquito, let alone getting bitten by one. You can’t get two steps from the door here in FL without needing a transfusion in most areas. I encourage bats here with shelters. They, as well as frogs, lizards and spiders, are prized co-residents, to be rescued and released if they somehow make it inside the house. Anything that eats mosquitos has a free pass on my property.

Bats, snakes, and spiders all get a bad rep.

I’d make that statue! I love bats!!!

Are there no statues of Bela Lugosi?

Bats are awesome at eating mosquitoes. Very beneficial.

But now, boys and girls, let’s dim the lights and talk about ….vampire bats! MU HA HA HA! YES, they are real, and YES, they drink blood!!!

I saw them in the Cincinnatti zoo in ‘81. They were seriously scary looking; like little demons, in a dimly lit glass cage with a small dish of blood in their cage. Gross!

That’s an easy mistake to make, they thought you were Dracula.

Funny you should mention that…https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/554d0ea5e4b0fce4eb941a93/1579275849974-2H78D88MBQJASS9PH17I/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kPqQfq0L3n3wpHIsRapTfg8UqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8N_N4V1vUb5AoIIIbLZhVYxCRW4BPu10St3TBAUQYVKczo5Zn4xktlpMsMj-QlHXeMfNK6GwvtVkYEWiR8XAPyD3GfLCe_DXOSC_YcAacWL_/bat+sculpture.jpg

I go one better. I provide them with housing. There’s a couple families of bats living in the shutters outside my bedroom window.

Bats can carry rabies, please be extremely careful if you have to catch and release them. Quite a few years ago parents saw a bat in their small child’s bedroom. They opened the window and it flew away. The child was too young to talk, but was taken to the ER and carefully examined. No injury was found and parents decided not to have any rabies shots. Child became ill and died a few weeks later from rabies.

You eat mosquitoes, and you’re not a spider. Yay for the bats!

Bats are adorable.