Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years.

Hi everybody! I hope you all had a good week! I saw a picture of some new bats on the Save Lucy Facebook page and thought I would write about them because they are a new species for me. When I first saw the picture, I thought they looked kind of like big brown bats, but they are evening bats! Their names are Wiggles and Shroom! Little Wiggles is missing some hair because he was sick and got some organic matter stuck in his fur. I hope he feels better soon. Little Shroom got her name from a very interesting characteristic of evening bats. They smell like mushrooms!!! Now, you might not know this about me, but mushrooms are not my favorite food. That said, I think I’d like to meet a little bat that smelled like one. Little Shroom is very cute, after all.

Evening bats are not well known and look a lot like big brown bats. They are smaller though and have shorter hair. Big brown bats have long wavy hair and little evening bats look like they have buzz cuts. Evening bats are very social and live in large colonies. They are found in the southern United States from central Virginia to the south. Some of them have been found in Pennsylvania though. They live in the forest and in open areas like river corridors and wetlands. They migrate south for the winter. The best news of all is that they are not found in caves. This means that they should be safe from WNS. You can read more about them here.