... has gone batty. Leslie has a setup in the laundry room of her home in Washington D.C.'s Northern Virginia suburbs to care for and rehabilitate orphaned and injured bats:
During early summertime pup season, she’s up every three hours overnight for feedings. Other volunteers help with caregiving, but Leslie rarely goes on vacation, even for a weekend. The bats need her.Why do this?
Leslie loves underdog animals, the ones the public perceives as ugly or scary. A single recovery does not save a population, but bats’ troubles often have to do with the way humans live on the planet.
“So I kinda feel like we owe them,” she says.
Mammal helping mammal. Human nature as reciprocal, not reptilian. At least at Leslie’s house.
After the feeding in the fly cage, she pauses just outside its door and looks up at the midnight sky. She removes her headlamp, shakes out her hair, arches her neck, takes it all in. She loves to glimpse the dart of a wild bat, silhouetted against the universe.God bless you, Leslie!
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