The rabbit I had when I was about 12 years old was a real character and got along great with the cats, believe it or not. However, he wound up having to be rehomed to Riverdale Farm (a local educational center) where I grew up, because I didn’t have a proper place to keep him and he was destroying the house. Come to think of it, he also kept wriggling under the shared balcony barrier and getting into our neighbor’s apartment. I was not exactly a good model of a responsible pet owner when I was a kid; I loved animals and would bring home anything and everything, but without thinking ahead of the needs and requirements of those animals.

This was on Modern Cat this morning. Joy should be pleased that she’s not the only one who plays cat peek-a-boo, though she may still be the only one who ever gave herself a black eye doing it.

I’ve hand raised several birds as well as cats, dogs, and pet rats, and it is very messy, round the clock work. It’s always amazed me how helpless birds and many mammals are at birth, and what a great job their parents do raising them just by instinct. A sparrow or rat, for instance, comes out looking like something that wasn’t quite ‘done’ yet – naked, blind, with skin so translucent you can see the organs inside, absolutely helpless. Getting the temperature wrong by just a degree or two either way or not feeding the exact right amount at the right time can doom the little one you are hand raising and yet an animal or bird parent with a brain about the size of a gumdrop can do it (usually in multiples!) perfectly.

Knowing the amount of work that goes into caring for orphaned wildlife, and also the importance of making sure that the babies grow up knowing how to survive in the wild, we have the greatest respect for anyone who takes on such a responsibility. As I write this, I am thinking that in addition to the donation we just made to Wild for Life, I am going to write a letter to the folks who used to run On the Wing again (even though they are no longer operating) to thank them personally. When we found those birds we knew we wouldn’t have the time to give them the care they needed and having that resource available was a wonderful thing. I am sort of feeling a bit ashamed, because at the time I was thinking “we did a good thing, we saved a life” but actually it was someone else who saved a life. We were just kind of in the right place at the right time to help that process along a bit.

I guess the updated WordPress must be a little more video-friendly… the last time I tried to embed a clip the entire page self-destructed.

Bats are very misunderstood by many and the average person probably conjures up images of blood sucking vampires or rabies when they think of them, which is unfortunate. They are amazingly diverse and fascinating creatures that have been around for at least fifty million years, they are the only true flying mammal, they play a very important part in the ecosystem as pollinators, and many species are very capable predators of insects such as mosquitoes. Even if you are one of the people for whom the thought of leathery winged little flying mammals brings an involuntary shudder, you have to recognize that they have a very valuable place in the world and it would be greatly worse off without them.

We recently decided to make a point of setting aside a little money each month to donate to worthy causes, and our first donation went to the Bat Conservation Society’s Fund for White-Nose Syndrome Research. It isn’t much, but maybe if lots of people can chip in little bits here and there researchers can solve this mystery and find a way to stop the die-off.

More information:

National Geographic: Bat Deaths in U.S. Northeast Baffle Experts

Indiana State University Center for North American Bat Research and Conservation

Bat Conservation International’s Fund for White-Nose Syndrome Research