When the time comes, the animals are returned to the wild. But sometimes injuries are so severe that Lollar's only option is to put the bats into what she calls permanent retirement in an indoor "flight cage."
Adopting a Bat
Lollar and her fellow bat-lovers are worried that the bat population is steeply declining.
Every day she checks on her charges, looking for orphans or injured animals in need of special attention, and then cares for the free and healthy bats at her wild sanctuary.
She holds workshops to teach others what she has learned, gives tours to school groups and runs programs like "Adopt-a-Bat" to raise money to pay for the hundreds of pounds of mealworms and fruit the bats consume every month.
For bat-lovers and "people who have everything," she says the "Adopt-a-Bat" program offers the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with a fuzzy little creature that most people seldom even see. Participants can even pick out which bat they wish to adopt: Cleobatra, Rocky Batboa, or Casper (an albino), among them.
"They're the most endangered land mammal in North America because of human expansion," says Lollar. "Being able to undo some of the damage we've done to them is one of the best feelings in the world for me."
Copyright 2001 ABCNEWS.com
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