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. As you all know, I went camping last weekend. I had a great time, but it was really cold! I am a little disappointed that I didn’t see any interesting animals. I really wanted to see some bats. I barely saw squirrels. I think the animals were all staying hidden because it was so ridiculously cold. And, maybe, just maybe, we were a bunch of loud and scary girls that they didn’t want to visit.
I want to remind everyone that next week is Bat Week. Don’t forget about the world record attempt being made on the 31st. If you can, please work on building a bat house that day. I hope you all participate in Bat Week and have some fun. You could dress up as a cute little bat, or wear something bat related. I got some new batty socks today that I’ll be able to wear during Bat Week. Maybe if we all do batty things next week, people will realize how awesome bats are and they’ll start celebrating as much as they celebrate Shark Week. That’s right, the bats are still a little jealous of the sharks.
And now for something really cool...A few days ago, I was talking with Mrs. Sturges (Save Lucy’s President) and she told me about something I think you should all know about too. She was talking about bat enrichment and how difficult it is to give enrichment to our local insectivore bats because they aren’t really too interested in anything other than eating and snuggling. Then she told me about how fruit bats like to play with toys! They also paint!!! I thought that was really cool and decided that I should look into it and share. There really isn’t too much information out there that I could find, but I did find something about one particular bat, a Malayan flying fox. His name is Brutus and he is 16 years old. He lives at the Oakland Zoo in California. He is an amazing bat who really likes bananas and likes to follow people around until they give him some. He also likes to paint! His humans put a canvass up and hang a wire mesh thing up in front of it. They stick paint brushes through the holes in the wire. Brutus likes to grab the brushes and move them around to paint! Isn’t that cool?! You can see pictures painted by many of the Oakland Zoo’s animals, including Brutus, here. You can also read about Brutus and some other amazing animal artists here
I hope you all have a good week!