For the final session of our Forestry Field Day, hubby and I chose to attend: “Bats on Small Forests.” Both the session we attended and the one before it had lots of people! I was surprised there was so much interest in bats!
Here are a few fun facts about bats:
* Bats are not blind. All bats have good eyesight. Bat eyesight is equivalent to human eyesight.
* Bats are one of nature’s best forms of pest control! Bats feed on night-flying insects, such as mosquitoes, moths, and many agricultural and forest pests. A single bat can eat several hundred mosquitoes each night … which makes them very good neighbors to have around!
* Types of bats:
Insect-eating bats. 2/3’ds of the bats in the world eat insects.
Fruit-eating bats. (these live mostly in tropical habitats)
Pollinating bats live mostly in desert habitats. Because deserts are so arid & hot many plants of the desert do not open their blooms during the daytime because all the moisture would be quickly lost. Instead, many desert plants bloom at night, to help conserve moisture. And hence, bats are perfectly made by God to pollinate these desert night-blooming plants! How cool is that!
Fishing bats. (I didn’t know bats could fish!)
* There are 950 different bat species in the world. Almost ¼ of all mammal species are bats.
* Bats live 15-30 years
* Many people are fearful of bats because they assume all bats are dangerous and carry the rabies virus. In actuality, less than 1% of wild bats are infected with rabies.
* People are fearful of bats because frightening movies have portrayed bats in scary ways; as well as Halloween portraying bats with scary images. In actuality, bats are wonderful, helpful, beneficial creatures with an important job in this world! Bats are not even around at Halloween time. Just like birds, bats also migrate in the Fall to warmer climates where there are plenty of insects; or bats hibernate through the winter.
I found our class/session about bats to be absolutely fascinating! I enjoyed learning about bats very much! Our teacher even had a special device she could attach to her cellphone which would pick up the supersonic frequencies of bats and translate them so that she could actually hear them. (bat calls are in a range far above our range of hearing) She regularly goes out in the evenings to bat-watch and listen to bats. So cool!
In thinking about this blog post, I asked God: “God, do you have something for me in all this?? Is there a spiritual application when it comes to bats??”
And the very first thing which popped into my mind was this: Absolutely nothing God has made is useless or worthless.
Lesson #1 –
Bats have a bad reputation because scary movies and scary images at Halloween have skewed people’s perception of them. But bats aren’t scary. Bats are very special!
Bats have been specially made by God with a very special role to fill in the ecosystem. Bats have a very special place in this world! They have a very important job! And they do their job well.
In the same way … you are very special! Perhaps you might feel like you are “not good enough.” Perhaps you might feel like people have a skewed perception of you. But you have been specially made by God with a very special role to fill in this world! You have an important job!
Be who God made you to be. You are not useless. You are not worthless.
Lesson #2 –
We don’t see bats very often, because they are nocturnal. But if bats weren’t around, we would all suffer from being overrun with countless swarms of mosquitoes and destroying pests. Our crops would fail. And we would all go hungry.
Even though they are unseen, bats matter! They have a very important job! And they do their job well.
So also, in the same way … perhaps you might feel like what you do goes unseen, unnoticed. Perhaps you might feel like all your hard work is for nothing. It’s not obvious. All that hard work … no one even knows.
But if you didn’t do that important job (the one you feel doesn’t matter that much; the one that goes unnoticed and unseen) … if you didn’t do that job, there would be a big gap of something missing!
You matter! That job God has given you to do … it matters! Even if it feels unnoticed. Even if it feels unseen. It matters! A lot!
Lesson #3 –
People assume bats are blind. People assume bats are rabid. People assume bats live together in big colonies of swarming thousands. But none of that is true. Most bats are solitary.
When it comes to life, people will assume.
Don’t let people’s assumptions keep you from doing what God has called you to do. Don’t let people’s assumptions get you down, discourage you, or make you quit.
Be who God made you to be!
You are special! You have a special place in this world! You have an important job to do!
Absolutely nothing God has made is useless or worthless.
Not bats. And not you.
You are not useless. You are not worthless. You matter!!
