Leslie Sturges

Just in time for the holidays, and with a few hours of cyber Monday left, we present this list of great places to find batty stuff. Let your friends and loved ones know you care about them with a fantastic bat gift, and support a great organization or small business at the same time. Or send the links to Santa or whoever is most likely to bring you presents! Gifts Adopt a bat, gift baskets, wine, and other fun things are in stock at Bat World Sanctuary Bat Conservation International and our favorite bat and cave goods store have teamed to provide cool stuff at Batgoods.com For the hard-core bat enthusiast, Bat Conservation & Management supplies bat boxes and kits, bat condos, and great field equipment Art enthusiasts will have a great time cruising Etsy’s offerings (search on bats). One of our favorite artists is Eastwitching Books For young readers there are a plethora of publications, some suggestions follow: The ever-popular Stellaluna by Janell Cannon Bats at the Beach, Bats at the Library, and Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies Bat Loves the Night by Nicola Davies Baby Bat’s Lullaby by Jaquelyn Michard Little Lost Bat by Sandra Markle The Christmas Secret by Tesia Johnasen (available here) Little Red Bat by Carole Gerber Or snuggle ’round the fireplace and read Lucy’s Story (link on left menu) on your laptop! For older readers we like The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell Pippa’s First Summer by Catherine Badgley The Silverwing series by Kenneth Oppel The Underland Chronicles series by Suzanne Collins (talking bats, rats, and cockroaches, yay!!) Happy gifting!

If you have recently registered for the Save Lucy club, and find you have been deleted, please e-mail us (contact info can be found on the home page). We are getting lots of suspicious sign ups and we are deleting them as soon as we see them, but we may have deleted ‘real’ people by mistake. Please let us know if you have any trouble using the site. Thank you Lucy’s people

Check out California Bat friends Cindy Myers and Project Wildlife on KUSI news in San Diego. Especially check out the amazingly adorable Western Pipistrelle in the photos. Also, check out Leslie & Sherry of Save Lucy on Voice of America here. Be sure to watch the video to see Mooch the big brown, Shaggy the red bat, and the orphan tri-colored bats, Titan and Monkey.

Come see us at Bat Fest Arlington. We’re celebrating the Year of the Bat with this signature event on August 27 at Gulf Branch Nature Center. See live bats, play bat games, take a bat hike and make bat crafts. Go here for more information!

Our friend Vicki Beckham-Smith contributed to a fantastic Georgia Outdoors segment on bats. . Learn more about Vicki and her bats on her website. Another great friend to bats, Corky Quirk, looks out for bats in Northern California through NorCal Bats. Her local public television station did a terrific special about a huge colony of bats Corky keeps tabs on. Watch it! A note from Lucy’s people…there is a lot of chatter about public radio and television, and some people have been very vocal about calling for cuts to government funding for public media. But some of the best and most accurate nature news and programming comes from public radio and television. Public media does not focus only on celebrities, sensationalism, or ‘big’ stories. Without public media, bats and local personalities would rarely get any media coverage at all. Please support your local public radio and television stations. The bats need them!

The Washington Post recently featured the Save Lucy Campaign’s president, Leslie Sturges. Check it out here