In an age of saving whales and reintroducing wolves, it should have come as no surprise, but the story about a group of fourth-graders in Bozeman selling baked goods to raise money to adopt a bat did just that.
Now I’m about as animal friendly as they come. As a kid I kept skunks and opposums as pets, caught snakes and snapping turtles just to get a closer look at them, and raised mice and gerbils until they began to take over the house.
I hunt, but years ago quit killing anything I wouldn’t eat. I’ll swerve to miss a jackrabbit crossing the road and have been known to brake for salamanders.
Bats, however, remain on the periphery of my goodwill toward critters.
And they deserve better.
Bats are responsible in large part for me living where I do.
When my wife and I began looking a real estate a couple years ago in the small northern Montana town of Malta we now call home our objective was a fixer-upper we could quickly remodel and use during hunting season.
Quickly being the key word. I didn’t want to spend all of my time working on a house, so we started out looking for something small and cheap.
Then my wife discovered an old, two-story stone house that had been vacant for a couple of years.
Too big and probably too expensive I told her. A similar fixer-upper in Bozeman, where we were then living, would sell for half a million dollars.
Of course this wasn’t Bozeman and that’s why we were here. And there was a catch -- the realtor asked if we were afraid of bats.
“They are dead though,” she reassured us.
Malta, it turned out, is home to the northernmost colony of migrating little brown bats.
About 30 of them, unable to find their way out, had died inside the house, their mummified corpses stuck to the windows and walls and nestled among the dust bunnies in the corners.
We fell in love with the house and were able to afford it, in part, I suspect, because it was littered with dead bats.
Two years later, the place is relatively bat-proof, although we hear them at times squeaking and rustling about in the rafters.
During the summer I catch the occasional bat that flies into the house through an open door, but can’t say I really relish the close encounters.
I’m told they eat mosquitoes, but at times up here, I swear they must be dining on something else.
I’d like to think I could live quite well without bats although I know I never will.
There appears to be little danger of running out of them, especially when there are fourth-graders out there selling baked goods on their behalf.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net