Yesterday I spotted this big beefy lizard with a sail, sunning himself by the coffee mill. He was every bit of 18 inches long.

Bat in the House

Two nights ago we found a bat of about 5 inches from wing tip to wing tip, flying in the house. Come morning we were unable to locate him. How did he get in? He probably just flew in when we were loading packages from the car to the house in the evening after a day of shopping.

Last night just after dinner (we eat and live by candlelight), our bat was flying fast in the twilighted room with the grace of a butterfly. He zoomed through the rooms and doorways buzzing us as he went by. After several failed attempts to seal off our living area (too many openings) we opened the kitchen door and the French doors. Our bat circled a few more times and gracefully exited through the French doors.

The wildlife here is amazing, I really enjoy learning about the many different varieties of bats that we have including fruit bats and vampire bats. They hang together, but their actions are very different. The vampire bats can walk on their elbows in the pasture where they wait for an animal such as our cows. They prefer wild animals, but a cow will do. When the animal walks by they spring up and scratch it leaving an anticoagulant so the animal continues to dribble blood. The blood gets on the bat and when they go back to their bat cave, they lick each other. Fruit bats do not lick, only the vampires lick and lick blood. If you put a vampicide cream on your cows, the vampire bats will return to the cave with the vampicide on them. Then the licking begins amongst the vampires, while the fruit bats hang and safely go to sleep.

You can catch the vampire bats in nets, I am not sure what you do with them then, but the nets have not been available to us so far.

Bats are very interesting and necessary for many reasons. If you have interest, you should google bats and find out more.

Wednesday April 15th, 09

I wrote the above piece this morning. This evening we sat down to an Italian feast from the garden, and lit the customary candles for dinner light. We were immediately buzzed by Bat Boy. I don’t think it was the same one, this one seemed smaller. I opened the French doors and have not seen him again this evening. Hmmm, where are they getting in? They can enter through a space no larger than the width of your little finger. When we find bats on the floor, we pick them up and launch them. These are always the fruit bats as the vampires do not need our help, they can jump up and launch themselves. In our previous house, we found them often. This is the first time we have had them in the new house. Wow, what a life we have here…