In the company of brown bats

In the company of brown bats I was sitting in my yard relaxing one evening just before dark when my daughter and girlfriend noticed some thing flying close by. I started to look around and here it came again whizzing by. Turns out, it was a couple of bats. I thought it was kind of neat but the girls weren’t as thrilled, to say the least. A few days later I had to get some boards so I headed out to my barn and climbed up into the loft. After I got into the loft I noticed a lot of feces lying on the floor. At first I thought it may have been mice or rats, then I looked up and I found the source of the problem — brown bats. I have a family or two big brown bats living in my barn, or at least that’s what I think they are anyway. They look to be big brown bats from all the information I found. Most of the bats that live in West Virginia are little and big brown bats and these ones look to be the big brown bat. For some reason I think they are neat and I have shown them to just about anyone brave enough to go look at them. I finally talked my girl friend into looking at them and even her granddaughter thought the bats were cool, but at a distance of course. My daughter, Tori, even went with me to look at them but I’m not sure she thought as much of them as I did. I know bats are not a very cute mam mal, but they get a bad rap by most people, mainly because of their looks. Did you know there are 1,000 bat species worldwide? Amazingly, bats make up almost a quarter of all mammal species on earth. You may already have bats around your house and not know it! The big brown bat, the little brown bat, the pallid bat, the Brazilian free tailed bat, and the northern long eared bat are common species of bats in North America. Here’s some quick informa tion about big brown bats, so if you build a bat house, you'll know who’s moving into it: Big brown bats, like the ones in my barn, have fur that is shiny brown and wing membranes, ears, feet and face that are dark brown to blackish in color. They navigate as they fly, using ultrasonic sound waves and listening to the echo to locate objects, a process known as echolocation. And big brown bats are noc turnal insectivores, eating many night flying insects such as beetles and wasps. E-mail Danny Snyder at dsnyder@timeswv.com.