Did you know that August 27th is International Bat Day? Well, if you enjoy bats as much as I did, you would!

I have been a part of Bat Conservation International for several years now…I think over 6! I have long loved bats for their Gothic qualities, but I also adore them for how cute they are. Yes, they have wings, but have you ever seen baby bats?

OH MY GOODNESS I WANT TO NUZZLE THEM.

Anyway, last Friday I was lucky enough to reserve a spot on Bat Night at the Hassayampa River Preserve, just outside of the Phoenix Metro Area.

The Beau and I drove up there and the immediately how it was almost 25° cooler there. It’s only 40 minutes from our house!

Anyway, we walked over to their picnic area, where a bunch of wiener kids were Cub Scout-ing it up, and listened for a while as the “Bat Lady,” a Game & Fish worker, educated everyone on bats.

Finally, the sun started to set.

We saw bats!!

I got a cool video of them flying around, but I’m still trying to figure how to set the “Batman” theme to it…

I have seen bats hanging around sporting events and mall parking lots, because bugs flying around lights = bats, but seeing so many of them, in a small grove, in the wild, was marvelous. The Bat Lady also had a machine, called a frequency division bat detector. It picks up all the little echolocating “click-clicks” a bat sends around it, so it can find bugs and not crash into other bats and trees. It was so thrilling to be able to hear them too!

We were supposed to be able to see them up close and identify them, thanks to these very fine “mist nets” they have at the preserve (for cataloging birds & bats), but the only thing that got caught was an ornery junebug.

Some of the kids had black lights and were shining them off the trails and the night took a turn for the unsettling. They shined the light on a log, just off the trail, and there were scorpions glowing all over it. It felt like there were fifty of them, but it was probably only three or four. I tried to keep my cool, but it was pretty unsettling. Not too long after that we left, but it was still a lot of fun.

Happy Bat Day, everyone!