Bats are mammals. They are of a grouping called Chiroptera (hand/wing). Can you believe bats make up about 20% of all mammals? Bats are good for eating insects and for pollinating plants. Even though they are beneficial, they still freak people out, worrying they'll fly into their hair. The smallest bat is about an inch, the largest is about 4 feet.
When I was a kid, we had bats behind our shutters outside our windows. The squeaking would keep us up at night. My mom got the brilliant idea to relocate them. She had my brother and I hold a blanket out, she took a broom, lifted the shutter out, swooshed them into the blanket, while they were flopping around, we closed up the blanket and took them to the barn to let them loose again. That is a harrowing experience I do not want to relive, a few times they flopped onto our shirts and heads. We were lucky we didn't get bitten. My mom had lots of great ideas, like burning the trash inside the house in our fireplaces. She once put an aerosol can into the fireplace and we came home to find the fireplace all blackened with soot and my mother's eyebrows burned off. My favorite experience with bats as a kid was tossing rocks in the air at twilight and seeing how accurately they could chase them. I've been on several ghost hunts that included bats flying around while investigating. So long as I'm wearing a hat, I don't mind. With as much hair as I have and everything that falls into my hair getting tangled, that is something to make me shriek during a hunt. Actually, the only thing during a hunt that would make me shriek!
In the mood for a creepiest vampire bats?
If you are scared of bats, just take a look at this and see if you don't go "aw...."
On an up note, there's a whole different bat worth watching....
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