No, there is not a Translyvanian castle buried in the remote depths of the Sierra Madre Mountain range in northern Mexico. But there is a resident population of vampires found in the countryside living off of fresh blood of living organisms. Fortunately -- and maybe this is a disappointment for some people -- these vampires are just small, palm-sized bats that only scratch surface wounds on the skin of cattle and deer and lick up the oozing blood. The compound found in the bat’s saliva that keeps their host’s blood continuously flowing and from clotting has been termed “Draculin” for obvious reasons and actually may show promise in treating human strokes and heart attacks.

Bats are also the target for many other myths. No, they don’t fly towards you trying to get caught in your hair (unless you have a load of lice, of course) and none of them are blind (even though some have highly developed echolocation radar that allows them to navigate in complete darkness). They are not considered flying mice but they are the only mammal capable of sustained flight. Bats certainly don’t breed like mice, usually producing only one or two pups each year. But what about that story of all bats being dirty and carriers of rabies?

Bats keep themselves photo-ready groomed by licking and combing their fur with their nails and their droppings are mostly dried exoskeletons of insects and do not support bacteria like mouse feces. Unfortunately, bats can contract, carry and transmit the deadly rabies virus just like skunks, foxes and dogs. But, fortunately, very few bats actually get sick and they are easy to spot because they can be found out and about during the day or they show no fear of humans and may become aggressive. Importantly, not all rabid animals get the “furious” form where they act aggressive, as the “dumb” form of the disease results in animals acting unnatural but not aggressive. The only good thing about rabies is that there is a vaccine that is 100% effective in preventing humans from contracting the other-wise fatal disease -- if treatment is administered within a day or two of the bite or exposure.  

Even perfectly healthy bats can become a nuisance, if not a safety issue, if they decide to use your home as their summer party place and send invitations to seemingly half of the bats in Navajo County to join the fun. Summer cabins only used occasionally -- and especially the ones left vacant for more than a year -- are favorite haunts for bats to take up residence in and use as a day roost. These issues can usually be resolved by sealing all possible entry holes and cracks down to ¼” from the bat roost into the human living quarters first. Then wait for the bats to migrate south -- after October -- and seal up all those small cracks and entry holes into their roost from the building’s outside. 

Bats also use roosts at night to rest during their hunting forays and hang out to finish their take-out meals of moths, mosquitoes and sometimes even centipedes and millipedes. These night roosts are usually on front or back porches where bats can fly in and out easily and are protected from the wind and have convenient toe holds to use. The problems arise when they select a hanging spot just above a nice sitting chair or right where you walk.  

To encourage bats to move on from using these night roosts, you can mount and aim fans or lights in the spots they use or try hanging things like Christmas tinsel or wind chimes in their travel paths. Since bats are protected and you can’t harm them, you can’t use any harmful methods. But a shot or two from a squirt gun near them can splatter enough ricochet water to discourage them from using a site so near high human use -- if you want to take a more active approach without harming them.

So, our attitudes towards bats, as well as most wildlife, depends on our assessment of their costs or impacts to us, compared to any benefits we might get from them. For most folks that don’t have to deal with bats in their homes, the free goods and services that bats produce far outweigh any negative impacts.  

Bats do the job of trainloads of insect repellent and bug zappers without the cost of those harsh chemical coatings or that metallic odor of burnt bugs. A single cave in Texas, with a large population of 20 million Mexican free-tail bats, is estimated to eat each night an amount of insects that would equal the weight of 200 Volkswagen Beetle cars! 

The smaller number of bats that live in the White Mountains focus their insect control activities near permanent water sources like golf courses, lakes and streams. There are no known large colonies of bats in the White Mountains so their impacts on bug control are more spread out. The spotty monsoon rains this past summer didn’t produce the usual bumper crop of mosquitoes so the local bats were probably more localized and may have had below low normal reproductive rates. Still, bats can eat their own body weight in bugs every night. Have you tried that lately? Even in pizza weight equivalents? 

To be more accurate, bats actually recycle pesky, crop eating and disease-spreading insects into a product sold as a plant fertilizer for over $3 per pound - guano or bat feces. As previously mentioned, bat guano does not contain harmful bacteria or hanta virus but is rich in carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous. When guano piles up and remains moist, a fungus can grow that causes a lung infection in people called histoplasmosis. But small piles of dry bat droppings are perfectly safe to scoop up and mix in with your house plants. Bat guano was also used in the Civil War by the Confederate States to manufacture saltpeter (potassium nitrate), an essential ingredient in black gunpowder, due to the naval blockade by the Union forces.

Bats are important economically also as plant pollinators and seed dispersers in other parts of the world where products such as mangoes and bananas need bats in order to reproduce. In southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico, bats are needed to pollinate the agave plant, from which we get tequila (but not the worm) as well as our State Cactus, the saguaro. Arizona’s White Mountain bats are all insect-eating carnivores and sometimes even become prey to owls, hawks, snakes and – unfortunately -- domestic cats, participating completely in the food chain.  

With relatively abundant sources of water in the White Mountains and Rim area -- compared to the rest of Arizona -- there are quite a few different types of bats that live here. Arizona as a state is second only to Texas for supporting the most diverse assemblage of bats.  

There are no nectar feeding bats that live at our high elevations but their absence is filled in with variety such as the northern spotted bat with their huge ears and three large, well defined white spots on their black back fur. The hoary bat, with the attitude of an ornery bobcat, almost hides its ears and face amongst an abundance of frosty, white-tipped hairs around its yellowish-brown face. The smallest Arizona bat -- and the first to emerge hunting every night -- the western pipistrelle, usually weighs less than a quarter and has to migrate every winter to warmer areas south or at least lower elevations.

The most common bats in Arizona belong to a group called the little brown bats -- or the myotis genus. There could be a half-dozen different species of these bats living in the area, with some only identifiable after they are captured using a fine net near a pond. Some have fringes of hair on the trailing edge of their tail membrane while others have different lengths to their tragus - that little flap of cartilage that we and bats have sort of sticking up and covering our ear canal. Bats can have an amazing variety of sizes and shapes of their tragus which makes it easier to identify them.   

A new technique is being used to identify bats that doesn’t require their capture and handling. We all know that bats echolocate to find and catch bugs and to avoid obstacles. But did you know that each bat species uses a little different frequency and pattern to accomplish this job? These differences are like bird calls and can be used to identify some bat species with special equipment that can hear above the range of humans. Unfortunately, not all bats echolocate enough -- or they hunt at higher altitudes out of the reach of the microphones -- so this technique may not provide a complete census but is another tool to help monitor bats.

Bats appear to be doing well in the White Mountains but more monitoring is needed. Projects like Northern Arizona University’s “Bat Blitz” -- where students, volunteers, Forest Service and Game and Fish folks all converge on an area for a week and intensively sample bats every night -- can provide valuable information. Sometimes graduate students also radio-track bats to help determine their important roosting habitat in the wilds of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests.

Everyday citizens can help bats by first becoming more knowledgeable about them by using resources on the internet or at your library. Use a licensed pest control company with a permit for handling bats if you have a nuisance problem with bats in your belfry -- or attic. Leaving dead trees standing, if not a safety hazard, can provide lots of day roosting habitat for bats in its cavities and under any exfoliating bark. You can also join one of the many bat organizations and become even more involved in the bat world. Good luck.