Bats!

While bats are around and visible all summer, there's something about seeing a bat in fall that seems especially appropriate. In September, a bat became quite friendly with one of the Main Library balconies. Unfortunately, no one wanted to get close enough to say hello or snap a picture.

Despite their reputation in vampire stories, bats are usually quite harmless to people. Well, there's always the threat of rabies, but bats are definitely not the only carriers of that disease. Bats are great consumers of pesky insects, and the majority of New Mexico's 27 bat species are protected.

The islands in the Caribbean also have many bats. Hiking there is always interesting, since the bats love the caves and crannies of the volcanic island I lived on. You have to be careful where you poke your head in!

For my last Halloween there, I had a pumpkin carving party with the only two pumpkins I could find. Afterwards, my friend brought her finished jack o' lantern home to her open-air house facing the Caribbean Sea. When she woke up the next morning, she found that fruit bats had been at the jack o' lantern all night, flying in through the nose, eyes and mouth, eating the fruit of the pumpkin from the inside out. All that was left was a soggy shell of pumpkin skin. No wonder why it was hard to find pumpkins! All that work to carve, and the bats finish it off in hours.

Before Photos of the jack o' lantern:




Out of respect for the emaciated post-bat jack o' lantern, no After Photos were taken.