Okay, I admit it. Burt Ward and Adam West did not make a Batman and Robin combination that the Gore Monger could really sink his teeth into. Whether it was the "Holy Batschtick" lines or the fakey climbing up the sides of building flats that turned me off I don't know. Whatever it was by the time the special effects guys got around to pasting "Boof!" and "Piffle!" across the screen as the dynamic duo battled the bad guys , this young monger was already gone in search of GI Joe, Rambo or some other cartoon where they had the sense to shoot the heck out of whomever they were battling it out with. This aversion to batman did not, however, keep me from the love of bats.
What a lot of folks don't realize is that bats are actually one of the most successful mammal species ever concocted. There are literally hundreds of bat species living virtually everywhere on the globe. There are giant fruit bats in Indonesia, tiny mosquito eating bats in the pacific northwest and a world of different critters between here and there.
First a few facts. Bats are the only mammal truly capable of flight. They are generally small and light weight with thin membranes that run from their ankles the tips of their elongated fingers. They have light fur rather than feathers and give birth to live young. They are not, as a general rule, blind. They do tend to be nocturnal and to use echolocation to navigate. To rest, they get up under some kind of structure, a bridge, a tree branch, the eves of your house, and hang by their feet. If they fall to the ground, they can't just fly off, they have to find something to climb and jump off of.
King David once said that bats fly at night because they are embarrassed that they don't have feathers and are afraid the birds will laugh at them. Bats are even reported in ancient texts to have a king who lives in a well in Cairo. I have a problem with this, not because the bat king might be living in a well but because people might be drinking water with bat king poo in it. Yech!
What's gory. In the movies, bats are eternally evil little blighters that swarm around your head in a great cloud and might even rip you limb from limb while they're at it. While this might be a little off the mark, there are several things about bats that are gory. First of all vampire bats.
While the relationship between bats and vampires has been a bit overstated, there are actual vampire bats. In South America, there are several species of bat who make their living by making small cuts in the hides of cattle and similar animals then licking up the blood. On an individual basis, these cuts are almost unnoticeable, but where the vampire bat infestation is particularly thick, livestock can be sickened and even killed by the raw number of bites. And yes, they do bite humans. Can you imagine, deep in the Amazon, a village and its animals slowly having their skins shredded by roving bands of bats? Ooo, I love it.
The other gory danger with bats is that they carry rabies. This is not in itself exciting. Most any mammal can carry rabies. They reason bats and a few other mammals, skunks for example, are considered more dangerous is that they live longer once infected and so have a greater chance of coming in contact with a human; namely you. Rabies is a very nasty virus that is gory because it attacks the nervous system. A rabies victim may develop tremors, seizures, hallucinations and all the other goodies associated with having your spinal column and brain eaten by a virus. Treatment is possible if it is begun shortly after infection. If the disease is allowed to progress, it is always brutally fatal. Suddenly, I have the urge to watch "Old Yeller."
The Gore Monger's favorite personal encounter with bats happened in Austin Texas a few years ago. In Austin, they've got a strange river/lake thing that runs along one side of downtown. There are long grooves along the underside of the bridge so that it can expand and contract in the Austin sun. Years ago a colony of Mexican Free-Tail bats moved in and today they number somewhere in the neighborhood of one and a half million bats.
At dusk it's possible to catch a ride on a pontoon boat that gets out in the middle of the river fairly close to the bridge. As if on cue, not ten or a thousand but hundreds of thousands of bats pour out from the underside of the bridge and flap off in thick columns to the farmland on the edge of town to feed.
It is awesome! On the night we were there, the nearly full moon was rising blue/gold behind us and the masses of bats were visible well out over the city.
One warning. When it gets too dark to see the bats any more, you motor back under the bridge to the dock. Unfortunately, thousands of bats are still dropping from under the bridge over you to begin their nightly flight. Naturally, the first thing a bat does when it takes flight is drop a load. If you happen to be under a thousand or so bats when they let fly, it's likely they'll drop one on you. They didn't warn us of this till we were already on the water. One of the little buggers got me right on the arm.
And you thought Texas was only for rich politicians. Now get out there and write.
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