Of all the critters to have sneak into the apartment ...

[michealdark]

These are microcheroptera, the smaller insectivores. This one was a common brown bat, basically a mouse with wings (lose the chisel incisors and replace with teeny carnivore teeth). They -can- be hand raised and get used to having people around but that's about it. Macrocheroptera, the flying foxes basically, are larger, arguably cuter and vegetarians ... more like flying monkeys in some senses.

Well, like I said, it would help with the flies.

[HamsterRage]

Unfortunately White Nose disease may make bats extinct in a few years:
http://www.livescience.com/20629-gra...-syndrome.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...e-environment/

[FanboyStranger]

... we had to get bats! Actual, for real, microcheroptera. The apartment manager says that she's had several reports from around the complex lately of bats getting in (they're older buildings and not always sealed up as tightly as they could be), apparently somebody drove a bunch of them out of wherever they'd been nesting lately and we became the new nesting ground of choice.

I like bats, in general, I just don't want potentially flea ridden, disease carring wild ones fluttering about the apartment at random.

I have to ask: Did you or your roommate have a strange compulsion to go out and fight crime after the bat got in?

[Shurato2099]

We were asked about that, and the answer was no. This wasn't some huge, imposing image crashing through a window ... this was a little flying mouse trying to get out of a small room. We nicknamed it Batley and showed it the door.

[EmarAndZeb]

Unfortunately White Nose disease may make bats extinct in a few years:
http://www.livescience.com/20629-gra...-syndrome.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...e-environment/

FUUUUUUUUCK. First the Tasmanian devils, then the bees, now the bats... quit it with the PLAGUES, NATURE...

[Tyr]

At least it wasn't Critters, like in that movie.

Or vampire bats, although those typically live much further south then were he's from and usually just feed on cattle. As I understand it most bat species actually carry less diseases then rodents. However, their droppings can be a problem. They leave a ton of it which can damage the buildings they inhabit.

[Shurato2099]

Or vampire bats, although those typically live much further south then were he's from and usually just feed on cattle. As I understand it most bat species actually carry less diseases then rodents. However, their droppings can be a problem. They leave a ton of it which can damage the buildings they inhabit.

Much further south. And further west in general.

[Morrison_Lad]

Well, it was literally -- and I mean LITERALLY -- raining dead fish flies the other day. I am seriously phobic when it comes to insects. And they were everywhere. I couldn't leave my house. It was a nightmare.

I WISH we had bats.

[michealdark]

I'm deathly phobic of stinging insects myself. And this year, thanks to it being much warmer much earlier than last year, we've been slightly ahead of schedule with them. So I kinda wish we had bats too...although I don't think they eat stingers, but more flies and misquitoes (which we're a little behind on this year because it's about 60% drier than it was last year)

[sunbird]

I'm deathly phobic of stinging insects myself. And this year, thanks to it being much warmer much earlier than last year, we've been slightly ahead of schedule with them. So I kinda wish we had bats too...although I don't think they eat stingers, but more flies and misquitoes (which we're a little behind on this year because it's about 60% drier than it was last year)

You need yourself a bee-eater.