Biology’s Batman
 
Maritimer Matt Saunders misses no opportunity to go to bat for nature's most misunderstood critter Published:  The Globe and Mail, April 6, 1991, FOCUS BY DEBORAH JONES, HALIFAX MATT Saunders hunches his shoulders, flips his fingers backwards and mimics a bat walking on its thumbs. He's good. For a minute it's possible to imagine a giant bat awkwardly walking across the table of the pancake restaurant we're sitting in. Then he laughs, the spell breaks, and the imaginary bat vanishes behind a salt shaker. Mr. Saunders, 27, is known as Batman throughout the Maritimes because he loves - and protects - bats. He studied the critters for his master's degree in behavioural ecology, and misses no opportunity to go to, uh, bat for what he calls the world's least-understood animals. Got an unwanted bat colony in your attic? Mr. Saunders will come to the rescue. He'll remove the bats, stopper their entranceways and make sure they're relocated. The price depends on how many holes he has to plug. Mosquitoes in your backyard driving you batty? Mr. Saunders will bring you a bat house to entice bug-eating bats, and some bat poop to put in it to make the new tenants feel at home. Being Batman is not Mr. Saunder's day job. He is just finishing an education degree and plans to become a school teacher - though his tuition at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., was paid for by his bat expertise. His summertime bat-relocation business - Bat Check - based in his home town of Old Barns, N.S., is thriving in the Maritimes, and he has to turn down orders from Quebec and Ontario. Mr. Saunders clearly likes his work. He often gives talks to school children, and brings along a nice little bat or two to show the kids how bats can fly around a classroom without getting tangled in their hair. " Unless you have a lot of bugs in your hair, you're not going to get bats in your hair," he says. "The nicest thing about bats is that no one else knows about them. It's so much fun telling people, 'No, you're wrong!' " Mr. Saunders takes swings at other misconceptions about bats - wrong- headed terms such as "blind as a bat" and "bats in the belfry" which imply that bats are blind and crazy. Indeed, bats have relatively huge eyes and can see perfectly well. Mr. Saunders says they're reputed to be blind because they fly at night and use a highly sophisticated sonar system with their oversized ears and bulbous noses to detect objects. As for being crazy, Mr. Saunders says bats are charming, intelligent and sane. To prove his point he tells the story of Thelma the bat. Thelma was trapped in the Foothills Hospital in Calgary. Mr. Saunders saved her while in the city taking his M.A. at the University of Calgary. Thelma lived with him for a few weeks, and learned to fly to him and eat out of his hand when he snapped his fingers. "But I never try to keep them as pets," he says, noting that any bats he catches during relocations are released again, although they might live with him for a day or two, feeding on his bugs. "My landlady doesn't know, but I've got a colony of beetles in my closet." A bat is not a rodent, he says. "It's like a little dog, rather than a little mouse." There are more than 1,000 species in the world. Only a handful are vampires, all of which - unlike the fictional Count Dracula - live in South America, where they suck blood from animals. Nor are they, despite their reputation, notorious carriers of rabies. They can contract the disease. But Mr. Saunders says they're usually disease-free and long-lived. In Canada, the oldest known bat is 31. If people knew the truth about bats they'd regard them as friends, says Mr. Saunders. "Each bat eats up to half its weight in insects every night - the equivalent of 1,000 to 3,000 mosquitoes. No man-made insect deterrent can compare." In some countries, nectar bats pollinate trees and shrubs and fruit- eating bats disperse plant seeds. "The only real harm is they leave droppings when roosting in attics! and they're kind of smelly." He got into the business quite by accident. Last summer, when working as a biologist in Prince Edward Island, he heard of a bungled removal job by an exterminator who killed hundreds of bats by accident. The horrified homeowner, who still had a problem, heard of Mr. Saunders' interest and asked him to help. He succeeded, and when scores of other people began calling he started his own business, removing bats from 50 houses last summer. Bats can only be relocated before the end of June, when they give birth, or after the end of July, when the young can fly, he says. He puts one-way chutes on the bats' entranceways to let them out, and then plugs the holes. Because bats will find ways into a favourite haunt, he advises homeowners to put out bat houses to keep them content outside. Bats in attics are always females seeking warmth to give birth and nurse their young, says Mr. Saunders. In winter, males and females hibernate in damp caves or mines. For the future, he says he may franchise his summertime business, in the way college-painting companies have harnessed student labour. As for the other Batman, the one in black with the neat car, Mr. Saunders says disparagingly, "Batman doesn't know anything about bats. He's a crime fighter." True enough, but Mr. Saunders has more than a name in common with the Caped Crusader. His brother's name is Robin. He says he has hopes of recruiting his help this summer. Copyright Deborah Jones 1991 About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted. Please contact me for reprint rights. All material copyrighted ../About.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
An uncaped crusade to protect furry friends
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