April 17th is National Bat Appreciation Day by Author Elaine A. Powers

I’ve always been interested in bats and have enjoyed seeing them around the world. It’s an awesome sight around the world when these winged mammals take to the sky at dusk.

Bats have inspired me to try some rhymes:

(c) Elaine A. Powers

“There are 1,240 known species and many more unknown;

Except for very cold places and a few islands, bats are known to roam.

Bats are an important part of the environment, as pest consumers and plant pollinators.

Most important to us are those that eat insects each night,

Who eat their weight in insects while in flight.

Mosquitoes, gnats and flies, down they go –

Pest services worth four billion dollars or so.

Agaves are pollinated by Tequila bats

They should be saved for a reason like that.

Even bat droppings are important to people.

First, bats were valuable for what they left behind –

Large amounts of guano were commercially mined.

Guano was used as fertilizer to make crops grow.

During the Civil War, salt peter from bat caves made gunpowder blow.

Unfortunately, a lot of misinformation is spread about bats.

People still think bats will get caught in long hair

Looking perhaps to build a nest in there.

But bats don’t build nests, nor are they evil.

Folktales associate them with death, witchcraft and the devil.

But bats symbolize good fortune and happiness in many lands,

Including the comic book super hero known as Batman.

Bats can act as disease reservoirs.

When a bat gets sick, the disease is easily spread

Among its own kind, but sometimes, to other species instead.

Bats can be a natural reservoir for viruses, being social and mobile,

They’re a vector for rabies, a disease people have feared for a long while;

All mammals can be infected, but most are not, so have no fear,

But bats on the ground are sick, stay away, don’t go near.”

(Excerpts from Don’t Call Me Blind! By Elaine A. Powers (c), the fourth book of The Don’t Series, to be published in 2022.)

On April 17th, and every day, celebrate the amazing and only true flying mammal, their importance to the environment and to mankind, in the ways we know and the ways we don’t yet know.

#elaineapowers   #batappreciation  #lyricpower

Above Bat Image courtesy of  Julia Schwab from Pixabay