iBatTX

Eeyore’s Birthday Party gave us a donation!

Eeyore is the grumpy donkey in the classic children’s tale Winnie-the-Poo.
He mopes around so much that his buddies throw him a birthday party to cheer him up.

Well, even bat workers can get a little mopey when things don’t go well for bats.  And bats have hard lives.
This year, the local non-profit organization The Friends of the Forest Foundation cheered up Austin Bat Refuge with a wonderful donation from the proceeds of Eeyore’s Birthday Party!
Thanks so much from us at ABR to this wonderful organization that has been giving back to the community for decades!

Wow! This brought a huge smile to all our faces!  Love you all!
Please join us all in cheering up Eeyore again next year on April 27, 2019 (always the last Saturday in April).
Next year’s event will be Eeyore’s 56th Birthday Party!
Please bookmark eeyores.org, put on a costume (or nothing at all!) and meet us there!

Thank You Lori Moore – and all the good people at FotFF for the very generous donation!

 

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge

Brushy Creek Bat Fest

Brushy Creek Bat Fest was fun!

It was great to see the enthusiasm of all the young bat fans!  This one came decked out in all her best bat finery.
Love the bat berrettes and the Vampirella shirt! She loved Kyndal and her little free-tailed bat pup!

Here’s how the day started.

“Hey Taz!  It’s Brushy Creek Bat Fest today!  Let’s go show the kids how cool bats are!”
He was a star!  And he got 998 likes on Instagram!  What a great bat! Can’t somebody give him just a few more likes?

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge

The smallest red bat pup!

This little eastern red bat boy needs a name!  18-147 just doesn’t have much of a ring to it!
Rescued by Hannah, as grackles surround him on her breezeway floor in San Marcos, she brought him to our info table at the Congress Avenue Bridge last Friday.  He wowed those who witnessed the intake process, and all of us marveled at the beauty of this little pup!

Here he gets another meal of his milk-replacement formula as he gets a supervised introduction to the outdoor reds.

And now a mealworm to top off the tank as the flight cage reds in the background anticipate their breakfast.

And finally he takes his place in the flight cage stair-step heiarchy! (That’s him at the upper right)
He’s so little we’ll have to watch him real closely as he introduces himself to all the others

You can do it little pup!

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge

Thirsty red bat in Fed Ex warehouse

We want people to know that when bats swoop down low inside a building, they are not attacking, they are simply desperately thirsty!

This little red bat was trapped in a FedEx warehouse and was panicked and exhausted from dodging forklifts and floor polishers.  She was desperately thirsty and repeatedly skimmed what, in the natural world, would have to be water.

Bats’ echlocation calls bounce away off flat shiny surfaces, instead of back at them, so millions of years of evolution tell them the only thing that has that characteristic (in nature) is water.

Her exertions only gave her a tounge full of floor wax instead of water and after a long while she collapsed on the floor, completely spent.
Steve and co-workers came to the rescue and contained her and brought her to the refuge. Thanks so much y’all!


She had had it with humans by the time she came to us and was as feisty as can be, and that’s saying a lot for a red bat!
We fed and watered her as much as she would let us, and soon it was obvious that she was really wanted to go.

So at midnight, after one last long drink of water and a few more mealworms, we sent her back to the wild from the release platform.

All the best little bat!  Thanks for the visit!

 

 

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge