My friend was sharing the story of her 4-year-old son who wanted a bat for a pet. She quickly suggested a puppy. He said, “Puppies just lick you and bite you.”
She said what about a kitty? He said, “Kitties just scratch you and bite you.”
He insisted he could keep a bat in a cage in his room. She told him the bat would be very sad in a cage. She then suggested a bunny. He responded with, “Bunnies are too fast and it would hop away.”
She asked (jokingly), “What if we break two of its legs?” He thought for a minute and said, “What if you break three of its legs?”
Then his sister piped in, “Oh great, a one-legged rabbit. What kind of pet is that?”
Anyway, they never got a bat but they got lots of bat toys, a bat house, books, and a giant balloon bat for his room. She wanted him to know that bats are good.
I was never a fan of bats until I moved near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. I bought an older home that had lots of bats. Two made their way into my house. The first I gently captured with a towel and carried it outside…the second brushed the back of my head with its wings, I freaked and the tennis racket did the rest. Not one of my proudest moments. I had the heebie jeebies for weeks and hired the “Bat Man” to come and figure out how they were getting into my bedroom at night.
After blocking their entrance hole around the air conditioner, the bat man explained that having bats around the house was a good thing. They supposedly eat their weight in mosquitoes every week or so. I was cool with it as long as they stayed outside.
There is a disease that is threatening the lives of thousands of bats here in Minnesota. It’s called the white nosed syndrome. Because of this, bat sightings might become rare and that means our mosquito population will be even higher. Here in South Haven we put up a bat house as soon as we started putting up birdhouses. We want to have them around at night eating bugs. I have yet to see one in my house thank goodness….no one wants to read that I took a bat to a bat.
Bats are the winged angels
to the rats.
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Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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