Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Little Milo the Bat has already been featured on Save Lucy’s Facebook page. He will be the star of a video called “Om Nom Nom”. From the title, you can probably guess, this little guy saves the day by eating. Eating isn’t scary and he saves the day! I would like to thank Mrs. Sturges for working so hard on the stories. She did an amazing job. Thank you to Ms. Annie Chen for doing an awesome job as an animator. All your hard work made these videos really fun to watch. And thank you to Ms. Kim O’Keefe for the adorable character design. Ms. O’Keefe is the same amazing artist who draws the bats on all Save Lucy’s t-shirts. I really wish I could draw bats the way she does! I would also like to say a HUGE thank you to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It was their very generous grant that made these animations possible. So, thank you to them for all they do for all the critters of the country, especially our little batty friends. Stay tuned for the videos. I hope you all like them. After you watch them, please share them with your friends and family. We need to get the word out that bats aren’t scary and they need our help. After seeing the cute, fluffy animated bats, I’m sure everyone will love them! I hope you all have a good week!
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! As you all know, we got a HUGE snowstorm here in Virginia. I got more than 26 inches of snow at my house! They cancelled school all week! It was awesome! Of course, while I was out enjoying the snow, some of the animals that call the outdoors their home were not quite as thrilled. One little animal in particular was quite miserable. This little animal is a Hoary bat. She had been hanging on a wall for a few days and then got snowed on. This made her a very pitiful little bat. Since she appeared to be in distress, the wonderful people at Save Lucy had to rescue her, despite the weather. Mrs. Sturges (Save Lucy’s president and founder and my very wonderful editor) went out in the storm and Mr. Sturges drove in some very dangerous conditions to get to the little bat. When they finally made it back to Save Lucy headquarters, it was discovered that the little bat was underweight and dehydrated. She probably would not have survived the storm without help, so I’d like to say a big thank you to the person who found her and called Save Lucy! And a big thank you to Mrs. Sturges for risking her life to save our newest little friend! Our new friend is now named “Blizzard” and is doing quite well. She loves to drink water and has developed a liking for mealworms. She has even taught herself to eat mealworms on her own […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! First, I would like to thank all my readers in the Midwest who came through for me! You all went above and beyond the call of duty! You all are awesome!!! As you remember, I requested that some snow be sent my way. I was hoping for snow Tuesday night so that I could have a 5 day weekend. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, we had a whole half inch of snow on Wednesday night. That half inch crippled the city, caused at least 1,000 accidents and closed schools on Thursday! And now we have JONAS!!! Fairfax County and all the other counties and cities in the area went ahead and closed schools ahead of the storm. That gave all us Fairfax kids a 1 day school week!!! So, thank you, thank you, thank you! With all the snow we are going to get with this storm, I might not see the inside of a school for at least another week! Maybe two!!! Now for the bat news…there is a new bat being cared for here at Save Lucy. Some of you might have already seen his picture on the Facebook page. His name is Gooey and he is a handsome little fellow. He was found in a military installation stuck to a glue board. For those of you who don’t know, glue boards are terrible pieces of cardboard that are coated with glue. They are supposed to trap mice and insects, but they trap anyone who is unfortunate […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great week. The bats here at Save Lucy and I are very excited about the long weekend. The bats have decided to spend their time sleeping and eating mealworms…I like the sleeping idea the best, how about you? I am especially happy because, while most people have a nice 3 day weekend, I will have a 4 day weekend. There is a teacher work day on Tuesday!!! Boy, am I excited! I’m going to sleep LATE!!! Ok, now for some bat news. Little Lemmy is doing surprisingly well. When she came to Save Lucy, she was in pretty bad shape. Now, she is getting stronger every day! She is doing so well that she was moved from her “hospital crate” to a “big girl crate”. I think that’s great news! I hope she continues to improve and will be able to be released when the weather gets better. Speaking of weather, it has been much colder lately. The poor little bats are getting confused because it was so nice and then got so cold so fast. Some of them might have picked some less than ideal places to roost. Some of those less than ideal places might be in a human’s nice warm garage or attic or something toasty like that. If you see a bat where it shouldn’t be, please don’t touch it. The best way to help a bat is to call a rehabilitator. Always remember, don’t touch the little critter, […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week and enjoyed your first week back at school after the nice long break. I know…who am I kidding? Right? I hope your first week back was bearable and not too painful. I found another interesting article about bats. It was hard to find this one. I had to sift through all kinds of baseball bat news stories. There was one about mysterious baseball bats being tied to posts in CA. Finally, I found an interesting article! This one is about furry bats, not wooden ones! Much better!!! Scientists have figured out how bats land upside down. Bats land in a very unique way. They fly with their cute little heads pointing up and then do an extremely talented acrobatic move that puts them upside down so they can land properly. No other flying animal lands this way. Personally, I think they should get a medal. The article explains exactly how our little friends accomplish this. You can read the article here. Basically, bats use their heavy wings and solid bones to their advantage when they land this way. Bats are very heavy compared to birds (not so much when compared to us). They use this weight to change their body’s inertia and shift their center of gravity when they come in for a landing. This allows them to flip around despite their weight. The article also mentioned some fruit bats in Central America that don’t land upside down. They have suction […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a very Happy New Year! I thought you all might want to know about the last little bat Save Lucy got in 2015. It is a big brown bat that was brought in on December 28. It was rescued from a storage unit and was in very bad shape. Its left eye is damaged and the left side of its face is hurt. It also holds its tail in a funny position, so something might be wrong with its tail or back. When it first got to Save Lucy, it was very dehydrated and near death. The rehabilitator had to work quickly to save the little bat. Because it was so badly hurt and sick, the rehabilitator could only do a quick exam before beginning to take care of the bat. During the exam, it was decided that Save Lucy now had a new little boy among its patients. They named him Lemmy after the lead singer of a band called Motorhead. The singer passed away the same day that little Lemmy the bat was rescued, so it seemed like a perfect tribute. I got to meet little Lemmy the bat on the 30th. He was still very sick, but was feeling a little better than he had been a couple of days before. I got to watch him eat some very tasty mush and drink some water out of a syringe. Little Lemmy did not appreciate his human caretaker very much and I […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years Hi everyone! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! The bats at Save Lucy definitely did. They loved all of their presents. They got mealworms, mealworms and more mealworms! There were some very cute pictures on the Save Lucy Facebook page of some very festive bats. One of them was even eating a yummy mealworm candy cane. Honestly, can you think of anything tastier? For this week’s blog, I wanted to write about a festive and batty Christmas story. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one. It seems no one has written a festive Christmas story that involves bats!!! We might have to do something about that. So, anyway, I found an interesting article about bats…not Christmassy, but still interesting because it is about bats. Scientists in Israel did some experiments with bats and found out that they produce longer and louder calls when there are a lot of other bats around. You know how when you are in a crowded room and there are a lot of people talking, you start talking louder? It looks like bats do the same thing. I thought that was pretty cool. You can read the article here. I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season! I hope everyone has a very Happy New Year! Next time you hear from me it will be 2016!!!
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I did because it was the last week before a nice long break from school! I hope everyone has a wonderful winter break! As I am sure everyone knows, the new Star Wars movie came out Thursday! This lucky girl is going to go see it today! I thought it would be funny to look up pictures of Yoda dressed as a bat. I didn’t really find one, but I found a great new Yoda-ish bat. Well, it’s new to me, but it was discovered back in 2011. The Nyctimene tube-nosed fruit bat was found in Papua New Guinea. A lot of other animals were discovered during the same survey that found these bats. Scientists found more than 200 new plant and animal species! The Nyctimene tube-nosed fruit bat is the one that interests me right now because it looks a little bit like Yoda! Check out the pictures. You can see for yourself, the little guy looks a little like Master Yoda, don’t you think? Handsome he is, hmm? If you want to see more about the survey, you can read the article here. I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Since it’s Hanukkah, I thought it would be nice to research Israeli bats. Don’t worry, I’m still keeping my promise to little Freda. I just haven’t found the perfect “sponsor candidate.” I’ll let everyone know as soon as I have someone in mind. So, the first thing I learned about Israel and bats is that there are a lot of them! Apparently, every part of Israel has bats living there! They have 33 different kinds of bats! I think that’s amazing because Israel isn’t really a huge country. It’s about the size of New Jersey. They have one kind of fruit bat and 32 different kinds of insectivore bats. I read an old article about Israel’s bats. The article was written last summer and was telling people about Israel’s Bat Night celebration. Apparently, people in Israel (just like here) sometimes think that bats aren’t the most awesome creatures out there, so the Israel Nature and Parks Authority uses Bat Night as an opportunity to teach people about all the amazing things that bats do for us. So, if any of you will be in Israel during the last weekend of August, they seem to have a pretty cool Bat Night celebration. You can read about it here. After I found out that Israel has so many different kinds of bats, I thought it would be nice to do a little more research. What I learned is really amazing! Scientist have discovered […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a middle school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Her family cheerfully hosted the wild colony for years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. I found something that I think is really cool. Little Freda is excited about it too. You remember little Freda. She’s the one who is still looking for a celebrity sponsor. Someone is really sad that a certain comedian didn’t respond. But, that’s a story for another day. Today, we talk about airport screening! Now, I know what you’re all thinking. How could airport screening possibly be “really cool?” Well, it’s really cool because the scientists that came up with the electromagnetic detectors that airports use modeled them after the echolocation of bats. They modeled it specifically after the echolocation of Brazilian free-tailed bats. That’s the part that little Freda is excited about. As you all know, bats use echolocation to sense where objects (like yummy moths) are. Airports use the same sort of thing to see if people are hiding things under their clothes. The scanners use acoustic cameras that use a similar technique to a bat’s radar to see through clothing. You can read about it here. Now, about that other topic that we mentioned a little earlier. Freda really wants a sponsor. She is insanely jealous of the little Australian fruit bat and wants a sponsor of her own. If anyone out there has any ideas of who would want to sponsor a bat, please leave a message in the comment section below or on Save Lucy’s Facebook page. I promised little Freda that I would spend the […]