Bats, we got 'em . . .

Before I get a collective 'ewwwwww' from everyone, let me say that bats are not blood-sucking rodents that attack cows and people and grow up to have teenagers swooning over their washed out and pale good looks.  Those are Hollywood Bats.  What we have are what we have been hoping to  attract them into our barn all summer.  Here's the deal.

15 feet up - here batty , batty

A couple of photos of the bat house we installed that is designed to hold 50 bats or more (I know! jam-packed!) and we're reeeeaalllly hoping they take up residence.  Please, please, please.

From the Bat Conservancy website in Austin, Texas (where people gather every evening at the Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the bats), bats will eat an unbelievable amount of mosquitos, garden and farm insects every day.  A good thing around the farmette.  

Bats are NOT birds - they are little flying mammals and give live birth to one little pup a year that weighs nearly what they weigh - imagine that, moms.  Take a moment and ponder.

Cute bat : what we have

For the bug thing alone, we've been hoping for bats to take up residence in the barn and a few nights ago, we were putting some things into the old stable portion of the barn when a bat flew in, made a couple of laps around the  light, a few laps around us and off he flew!  We were so excited that we were nearly giddy!

By the way, do you have any idea how hard it is to find cute pictures of real bats?  Completely unphotogenic.

No worries - we don't have nearly this many