 |
| The Riverville Bat House is already home to over a hundred bats! Find out more by below. |
Despite the recognition they get around Harvest Day (aka
Halloween (which I don't celebrate due to it being of the occult), aka “Free
Candy Night”), bats are poorly misunderstood. The creatures that are
incorrectly believed to be all blood-sucking monsters that get tangled in your
hair (if you're unlike me and have enough hair for something to get tangled in
it) are misjudged by many. In fact, these creatures don't get tangled in your
hair and only three species suck blood (and they only live in Central and South
America). In fact, while not all of them are endangered, bats still need
protecting. Many of them loose their homes – often times caves are destroyed –
and habitats and they need other places to live. That's why Dr. Arizona
Stevenson – a zoologist at Animal Adventures Inc. (AAI.) and her
daughter, Angel – who's head of the Jurassic Dino Girl Club – have gotten
together with a number of other people to bring a new project to life that will
help save bats – a bat house! “Bat houses are similar to bird houses,” explains
Arizona, “but bat houses are, of course, designed for bats!” Many people build
bat houses and set them up in their yards or in elevated areas, but Arizona's
group is taking it to the extreme – it's a giant bat house! Called the
Riverville Bat House, it stands 30 feet tall and is 20 feet wide. Arizona is
quoted for saying, “While 20% of all mammal species are bats – there are about
1,240 different species – bat numbers are on the decrease worldwide. These
animals are important to not only nature, but to us as well. 70% of all living
bat species are insectivores and they get rid of many annoying insects,
including mosquitoes. At the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, the
colony of 1,500,000 Mexican free-tailed bats eat 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of
insects each night! Other species of bats are important pollinators. Kind of
like bees, they spread pollen from one flower to another and this helps the
flowers reproduce . . . [since] bats are important to both to nature and us, we
feel that we really must protect these mammalian fliers God created.” Located
just outside of town, Arizona's group of volunteers successfully finished
mounting the bat house on October 7th and already bats are taking
interest. Arizona and the others have already spotted about numerous bat
species that make their home there during the day including: big brown bats,
little brown bats and common pipistrelle bats. Arizona's daughter Angel has
already expressed that she's glad she and the other “dino-girls” (as she calls
them), could help construct the bat house. “It was really fun,” she says. “Me
and the other five dino-girls found it a lot of hard work too, but in the end,
it was really worth it. Since bat numbers are disappearing all over the world,
every little bit we can do helps the bats as a whole. Besides, we really needed
to earn our 'Conservation', 'Bat-Lover', and 'Helping Others' badges (even
though I've already gotten the 'Helping Others' badge several times before).”
As of when this article was published, approximately 150 bats spend the day at
the Riverville Bat House and hopefully, plenty more will decide to come too.
This project may seem small considering bat populations all over the world are
disappearing, but as Angel said, “every little bit we can do helps the bats . .
.”. I totally agree!
Written by: Mr. Smiley
Photographer: Daniel P. Smithwater
Edited by: Christian
Ryan, Joy Hammond
*Advertisement*
We here at Smiley’s News, I have been working night and day
to get articles ready. I could really use
some help! So we are looking for people interested in writing (especially kids
and teens).
If you are interested, PLEASE(!) send an email to animaladventures@aol.com
and save me from working night and day! I’m exhausted!
Weekly Cartoons
No comments:
Post a Comment