Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Karl Merton Ferron

The bottom line on my bat adventures?

I am probably going to install a bat house next spring. Sort of a guesthouse for creatures I have learned to like, although my daughter may want a vote here.

I agree with Molly. Bats have bad PR. Everything I have learned about them is positive -- they eat the mosquitoes that bother us and a host of other insects that plague crops. And they are no more likely to carry rabies to humans than any other wild creature, such as racoons or foxes. Probably less so.

It is just that they aren't cute. And there is that whole vampire thing going on.

And Molly is right about the "white nose syndrome" as well. It is a deadly fungus that has not shown up in Maryland yet - in part because Maryland does not have a "bat-worthy" system of caves, and most of Maryland's bats go to West Virginia or southern Pennsylvania to hibernate for the winter.

How does it kill bats? According to Dana Limpert, bat ecologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the fungus irritates the bats' noses, causing them to wake frequently during their winter sleep, using up valuable energy stores.

Thus, when spring comes and the famished bats emerge to begin eating the not-very-plentiful-yet insect population, they quickly succumb to fatigue or disease and die.