They've been burned out of their homes, mauled by cats and smashed by car antennae. At best, they're largely forgotten -- until they show up at this time of year as scary Halloween decorations.
In the real world, bats are more menaced than menacing. In fact, they're constantly being killed off by natural and man-made threats.
No one knows this better than Leslie Sturges, a park naturalist at the Locust Grove Nature Center in Bethesda and one of a handful of wildlife volunteers who specialize in caring for injured bats. If a bat in the Maryland-Washington D.C. area has been hurt, Sturges is as likely as anyone to get the call.
"She's one of the few people out there who will nurse them back to health," said Dana Limpert, the Department of Natural Resources wildlife specialist who handles bat inquiries.
Sturges gets hundreds of calls every year. Since 2001, she has rescued about 50 of the animals annually, collecting bats found along roads and in backyards and attics.
When they're stranded but healthy, she releases them - always within a half-mile of where they were found. "You want to keep them in the area that's familiar to them," she said.
But when a bat is seriously injured, she brings it to her Annandale, Va., home, where she feeds it mealworms and an occasional cricket while it recuperates. Restoring a bat can take weeks or months, and the round flight cage in her backyard, 12 feet in diameter, can hold up to 24 of the creatures.
The 44-year-old bat doctor is unpaid, has a "very understanding" husband and approaches her subject with the down-to-earth enthusiasm of a veteran high school science teacher. She says she does all this for one reason: "I find bats fascinating."
Rick Sturges, 44, a design engineer for the Navy, said his wife has always loved animals and kept snakes, turtles and geckoes before she took up bats about five years ago. He supports her efforts, but makes it a point not to get rabies shots so his wife won't ask him to do more with the animals.
"They don't creep me out or anything," he said. "But to be honest, I don't go back there much."
As scary as bats are to many of us, in reality they're relatively fragile and subject to injuries - most commonly tears in the wing membrane. Hawks, crows and blue jays are major predators. Birds will also fly at bat nests and take a baby bat when it falls to the ground.
