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Posted on 10/30/2008 6:42:08 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
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Are these the same bats also called flying foxes? I’ve always kind of liked bats. I’ve had a few personal encounters with small bats. One night my husband and I were riding around with the top down on my convertible. I got chilly so we put the top back up. Several miles later a bat flopped across the dash and onto my lap. My husband stopped the car and I shooed it out the door. I guess the people in the car behind us were wondering what that was all about. Apparently the bat had crawled into the top of my car while it was down. Another time I had been reading a book about vampires all week. I was up late one night reading something else when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I thought that I was seeing things because I was getting sleepy. It happened again. I started to watch and sure enough something was flying around my living room. A bat must have slipped in the door when we came home that night and was flying around inside just as it would if it had been outdoors. I woke the kids so that they could see it. Several times it would fly towards us and we would duck and scream. It was really pretty funny. Finally, it landed on some curtains and I captured it and set it free. One morning my cousin called me and told me he had a bat in his house and he was going to kill it if I didn’t come get it. So, I got a paper bag, climbed a ladder and flipped the bat into the bag. I took it home and let it loose and it flew under my chicken house. I checked on it later and it tried to frighten me by baring it’s fangs at me. I had to laugh at the absurdity of something so tiny trying to scare me with those tiny little teeth. Oh and by the way to satisfy those who are concerned about the danger of rabies. I was VERY careful. It’s not like I have sought out these little creatures, just that weird things seem to happen to me. I mean really, what are the odds that someone would be in the midst of reading the book ‘Dawn of the Vampire’ and have their home invaded by a bat? The End.
Well, duh...to myself. Of course they are the flying foxes. It says so right in the title.
Say, you know, there’s a theory that the Jersey Devil is an escaped non-native fruit bat (though that wouldn’t explain the sightings for two hundred years).
I'm sorry if that makes you a freak. How can anyone be a conservative (especially a rural one), claim to believe in G-d, and not appreciate G-d's creatures?
You know, I've always been puzzled by the special association of bats and rabies. Rabies is a disease (caused by a virus) to which all mammals are susceptible. Do people actually believe that "all bats have rabies?" If that were the case, there would be no bats at all (they'd all be dead from it!). OTOHm some people seem to think that rabies is the natural chiropteran defense mechanism, like venom to rattlesnakes--ie, they seem to think that bats have a special sac full of rabies germs kept just for injecting into people they bite, or perhaps that they share a sort of symbiotic relationship with rabies, like Komodo dragons do with the bacteria in their spit (which kills their prey for them).
My own personal theory is that the association of bats with rabies is merely a rationalization of the vampire myth. Think about it--"if a bat bites you you'll go crazy and bite two people, then the two people whom you bit will go crazy and bite four people, they'll bite eight people, they'll bite sixteen people, "und so the corruption vill spread throughout the vorld! Blah! Blah!!!"
But of course, this universal attitude can't help but affect me. No matter how irrational I know it is to think that "all bats have rabies," if one were to bite me I'd start going nuts looking for a vaccination!
Of course you’re right. There are too many “kill it and grill” types here.
First, liberals can make conservatives adopt any position whatsoever merely by adopting the opposite position. I grew up in the Bible Belt where smoking, drinking, and dancing were considered sinful. Now the "right to smoke" is the number one issue of many conservatives. And since the Left has begun loudly trumpeting their love for mother nature, many conservatives are now loudly proclaiming "Man is the measure of all things!" But really, aren't rural people generally more conservative than urban people, and more intimate with nature and wildlife?
On the other hand, "kill it and grill it" is not necessarily an anti-nature slogan since that's what all predators do (minus the grilling). Human hunters certainly waste less of their kills than many animal predators, and certainly if wolves and bobcats have the right to kill and eat other animals, then so do we. There's nothing more ridiculous than some vegetarian "nature lover" defending predators (like John Denver used to do).
Still, I like your attitude.
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