Sewage lagoons — and things that hang out around them — seem to suffer from an image problem. Find a beaver pond with a painted turtle sunning itself on a log, and you hear "oh" and "ah"; look in a sewage lagoon and see a painted turtle sunning itself on a chunk of debris and you hear "ugh" and "ever gross!"
Now mix in a critter which often elicits "eww" even on its own, and you have a scenario of the kind I encountered the other day — a bat flying about in mid-day, catching insects over a sewage lagoon. For some people, this is not a pretty sight. As for me, what could I say but "Awesome!"
Bats, like snakes and other creatures we love to hate, are terribly misunderstood. Feared and maligned because of countless generations of folk tales being told, retold and embellished along the way, bats have become known as either blood-sucking predators or disease-drenched carriers of the Black Plague. Neither is completely true (nor completely false).
The bat seen the other day at the sewage lagoon was fluttering above the water, occasionally dipping to the surface causing small circular ripples to appear. It was quite reminiscent of a tree swallow, but with slower flight and more flapping of its wings. With little imagination the bat looked like it was being dangled from a string and held just above the water.
Just seeing a bat out in daylight may cause the jitters in some people, as bats are supposed to be night-time flyers. However, there are a couple of species that commonly do hunt in the daylight hours, and need a drink of water just as readily as you or I.
But wait a minute, I sense some of you are thinking, you mean there are more than one kind of bat in the area? The answer is a big yes; in fact, there are eight species in Ontario, with six of these having been found in this area: Little Brown Bats, Big Brown Bats, Silver-haired Bats, Northern Long-eared (Keene's) Bat, Eastern Red Bat, and Hoary Bat.
On our farm we have confirmed Little Brown Bats and Large Brown Bats, yet today I added another species: Hoary Bat. It has a gorgeous silver mantle of fur with impressive tawny patches around it face. It was found resting on the side of a raised vegetable bed.
Bats are winged insect-eating machines and without them we would have a great many more leaf-munching, garden-chomping, skin-biting critters to deal with. While bats eat huge quantities of biting insects each season, the bulk of their diet is comprised of moths and beetles that may be flying by.
Over the past decade or so, as we have become a tad more enlightened about bats, there has been an increased interest to provide homes for these little flying mammals. Bat boxes are now almost as popular as Batman lunch boxes once were.
Bat boxes, like bird nesting boxes, are wooden shelters which people can make to entice bats to either hang around your home, or perhaps move out of your attic and live outside where they belong. I've not seen or heard that these structures have been as successful as the earlier brochures claimed they would be, but anything done to assist nature is a positive step.
On the down side, bats are capable of carrying a couple of nasty diseases of which we should be aware. Rabies is always the first one that people think of, yet there are very few cases of rabid bats being reported. Being mammals, they can certainly be a victim to rabies, yet very rarely are.
The more common disease we should be wary about is histoplasmosis, a rather nasty disease found in some larger piles of bat droppings. Should you need to clean up such a discovery in your attic, I would recommend you hire a professional to do so with proper breathing apparatus.
Despite the above two paragraphs, bats really are quite cute (they look like a flying mouse) and are providing us with an enormous service of insect control. Remember the saying, "What man doesn't understand, he fears." Take the time to understand yet another of the fascinating animals which live with us in this region.