Moonlight casts long shadows, leaves rattle on trees and crunch under feet, or are those Halloween ghosts and goblins I hear? Sitting alone by a window one night, a flash of motion outside rivets my attention, but I see nothing, and return to my reading. There again, just at the edge of my vision, is another ghostly disturbance! This time I’m sure I saw wings! Peering anxiously through the window into the moonlit night, my curiosity is peaked, and like the hapless victim of a horror story, I stumble outside to investigate. Suddenly, an ashen moth flutters wildly into the lighted window as if drawn to its death by a candle. Death obliges, but it comes from the satin wings and sharp teeth of a bat, which swoops in, grabs the moth, and silently disappears into the shadows.

Most people think of bats as filthy, rabid bloodsuckers whose sole desire is to fly into and tangle your hair. How far from the truth! Bats clean themselves like cats and groom their wings fastidiously. The wings are basically large hands, with skin stretched between the fingers. From the last, little finger, the skin stretches down to the ankle, and another membrane goes from one foot to the other.

Bats eat insects. Some tropical bats eat fruit, fish, and other animals, but all 16 species in North Carolina are insectivores. Bats will not get tangled in your hair, but they will fly very close to you on summer evenings if you are sitting outside. They’re after the mosquitoes hovering over your head! In the southern Appalachians, bats rarely carry rabies, but you should never pick up a bat with your bare hands. Like most scared animals, they will bite if restrained, and any bat on the ground during daylight hours is not acting normally and may be ill. Bats hanging in trees or caves are roosting there and should be left alone. Some bats roost together in attics, barns, or the belfry of churches. Bats are nocturnal, which is probably one of the reasons for their bad reputation. Instead of using eyesight, they use hearing to catch food, navigate, and locate other bats. In fact, blind bats can operate normally, but deaf bats are soon dead bats, for they can neither feed nor fly. They are more active at night because their insect prey is also more active at night. By flying at night, bats also avoid competition with most birds.

Perhaps the most famous bat, especially during the Halloween season, is the vampire bat of Central and South America. This bat is the story of legend! It does, indeed, drink blood from its victims, which are usually cattle or goats, but sometimes humans. The bat lands on the ground and drags its body and crumpled wings clumsily towards the sleeping victim. This creepy crawling reminds me of a lame Dracula, shrouded in his cape, stalking his dinner in that other Transylvania. Bats have more or less sacrificed walking in favor of flight (imagine trying to walk with both legs tied together and both arms tied down to both legs, and you’ll approximate the difficulty). The bat nips the sleeping animal on its ankle or toe, then laps up the oozing blood with its tongue. It is such a swift and sharp slice that the victim rarely awakens.

Have you ever noticed the gargoyles that adorn the buttresses and cornices of castles? Even the Biltmore house in Asheville sports a few. Gargoyles are almost always winged, with contorted faces, long ears, and fangs. They look just like bats! Bats have long and prominent ears because their hearing is their most important sense. The weird faces, with fleshy outgrowths around the mouth and nose, are also related to their hearing. The bats emit high-pitched squeaks from their mouths or noses, and the strange outgrowths help to focus the sounds into a sonar beam. This beam bounces off objects and returns to the bat’s ears, allowing it to "see" in the dark. The bats’ spiky teeth are used to catch the insects they eat, and their mouths are usually open while they hunt.

So conjure up a scary beast to put a little thrill into your Halloween. Give it wings to fly silently through the night, elongated ears the better to hear you with, a wrinkled face with beady eyes and prominent nose, and stiletto teeth bared into a grimace. Now you’ve got a bat, and all those scary features are just the way it catches mosquitoes and moths by using its hearing. Once again, our imaginations have just amplified one of nature’s many forms. Happy Halloween in Transylvania County!

   Unidentified roosting bat

  Rafinesque's Big-eared Bat from Bats of the United States

Gargoyles from Notre Dame Cathedral and from a building in New York

Dr. Jennifer Frick is an assistant professor of environmental studies and ecology at Brevard College.

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