Bats!

Screech! Bats are cool! Alright lame intro. We were camping in Arkansas this weekend at a place called Devil's Den. It's a state park with a nice big cave one can crawl around in called . . . well, Devil's Den. Get it? Uh, anyway there are bats in that cave! Here's a picture of the cute little guys sleeping away on the wall of the cave.
And I know that when the average person thinks of a bat, they imagine this big ol' black body about the size of your hand, and that's not including the wingspan. I know this because a guy we met sitting outside of the cave waiting for his 12 year old daughter to get back laughed when my dad held his fingers a couple of inches apart while talking about the bats in the cave. "How big, now?" he says . . . This from the guy whose 12-year old daughter braved the cave while he . . . chilled outside.

Most bats aren't as big as you think, though some are that big. There's no scale in these pictures, but these squeeky varmits are pretty small. I'd say they were about 1.5 inches by 3 inches all curled up like that on the wall. You could fit one in the palm of your hand! Though you really wouldn't want to grab one while spelunking, if you wake that sucker up, he'll be pissed! and he'll probably yell and wake up everyone else, and then all the spelunkers with have guano in their hair!
Hey, that one at the top of the picture is looking right at you! Well, he's snoozing, so his eyes are closed, but you can be sure that if you poked him (which is actually really tempting to do, because they look so nice and fuzzy), he'd see you pretty quick. Oh wait. That's right; bat's are pretty much blind.

So hey! Bats are small, cute, fuzzy, and they don't jump in your hair and fly around (much), which is in direct opposition to the scary-halloween-mascot version of the bat! Also, those are usually made out of rubber.