When you get right down to it, I’m very bat-like.

I sleep all day and play all night. I prefer dark places and I will absolutely ruin your barbecue.

No truth to the rumor that I’ll get stuck in your hair, though. It’s been tested and proven false.

I’m a fan of bats and there aren’t many of those. I’ve always wondered why.

“They are not attractive – I went to find a picture of a baby bat and they are even worse: Pink, naked and ugly! They have little eyes, they move so fast that you never really get a handle on their anatomy.”

That, my friends, is from Susan Gallo of Maine Audubon and she is a friend to bats. As icky as she finds them, Gallo is wise enough to know that we need bats and that in their way, the creatures improve out lives.

“They are phenomenal at insect control,” she says. “Three thousand bugs a night is one estimate for one little brown bat, our most common species.”

Think about that the next time you’re trying to entertain a yard full of guests who are slapping themselves silly because the mosquitoes are out in force. If not for bats, you probably wouldn’t be able to go outside at all.

And think about this:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated in January that between 6 and 7 million bats have died as a result of “white nose syndrome,” a mysterious white fungus that appears around their muzzle that has wiped out entire hibernating colonies. In Maine, bat populations dropped by more than 90 percent in just one year at two of three known hibernating colonies.

Fewer bats, more bugs.

And since you care, scientists are using volunteers to help them conduct the first-ever formal surveys of bat populations in Maine to find out how successful mother bats (there’s a mental image for you) are at raising offspring and to determine if the decline is continuing.

Maine Audubon, for its part, has already asked its members to help in the two-year study, and it is also asking others to get involved.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking they want you to climb into a cave and hand count all those screeching bats with their little black eyes and dagger-like fangs. But no.

“At this point, we’d like to hear from people who had or have bat colonies on their property, and let us know if those are simply active or inactive this year. . . . Just finding out where they are (and hearing if they are empty this summer) is going to provide us good information,” says Gallo. (See the information box for details on how to contact Audubon, as well as to learn why — if you have bats in your garage or attic — you should leave them alone until late summer.)

‘Puppies with wings’

Meanwhile, there’s the lingering animosity and misinformation about bats. They are avatars of all the unknown things that slither and creep in the night. (See the first-hand stories from readers if you disagree.) Instead of thinking of them as hardworking insect control agents, we link them with Dracula.

“People associate them with horror movies,” says Jen Lewis, who very likely understands the winged-creatures more than anyone in the state. “They see them as flying rodents. They call them rats with wings. But they’re not. They’re very passive, more like puppies; they’re like puppies with wings.”

You heard her correctly. Puppies with wings. (Maybe that’s why baby bats are called “pups.” No lie.) And Lewis would know. The operator of Misfits Rehab in Auburn, she has been taking in bats since 2002 after studying with Bat World Sanctuary in Texas. She even went through something called Bat Boot Camp with that group, living with bats from dawn to dusk for a week to learn their behaviors.

Lewis has come to understand bats, but more than that, she also likes and trusts them. How much? Word on the street is that she’s been known to carry bats around in her bra.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve done that,” Lewis says. “Working one-on-one with them, you really see their personalities. Each bat is an individual. No two are alike.”

White nose syndrome is taking a huge toll on the bat population, but it’s not just that, Lewis says. The misconceptions are killing them, too. People tend to believe that large numbers of bats are crawling with rabies when, in fact, a very small percentage of the bat population is infected.

“One of the saddest things is that whole fear factor,” Lewis says. “The thinking is, if there is a bat in your house, kill it.”

And what about those bats in your house? It happens in the summer and it invariably causes mayhem. People will go at the creatures with tennis rackets or baseball bats, when simply opening a window will probably do the trick. Bats really aren’t interested in hanging out with you, charming as you may be. They’d rather be outside where the action is.

“They’re not trying to be in your house. They don’t want to live in your habitat,” Lewis says. “If you have a bat flying around your house, it’s probably a juvenile who took a wrong turn.”

Crazy kids.

Maine Animal Damage Control owner Rich Burton of Lewiston is concerned about the declining bat population, as well. As he does with all animals, Burton prefers rescue over elimination. When he gets a call from a shrieking homeowner terrified about Count Batula flying through the house, Burton will capture the bat and bring it to Lewis if it is injured.

Ultimately, the bat is returned to the wild where it continues the work of keeping the bugs off you. And it won’t get caught in your hair while its at work, either.

“Another old wives’ tale,” says Lewis.

Back in the day, woman used a lot of product to keep their exotic hairdos in place. That product attracted insects, which in turn attracted bats. But the bats were after the bugs, not Aunt Helga’s quaff. As tenacious as that myth has been, you’ll have to search a long time to find a person who has actually had a bat caught in her hair.

Summer of the Bat (according to me)

I’m going to go ahead and deem this season the Summer of the Bat. They do a lot for us and now they’re in trouble. We need to step up and help them out. The beautiful thing is, you don’t have to actively like the creatures or carry them around in your bra to do your part. All that is required is a healthy respect for the animals and an understanding of what they’re really about.

“I’m a biologist,” says Gallo, “so I am intrigued with all their physical traits: the way their hands have evolved to become part of their wing (the skin connects their fingers, and their wrist acts more like a second elbow); their use of sonar to find food; their strategy for getting through the winter. They are just so unusual and we know so little about them.”

Summer of the Bat, baby. Think about them the next time you’re at the campground and the mosquitoes are swarming around your head with their blood-sucking proboscises probing for a vein. Keep wishing the bats away and you’ll have to get used to the itchy discomfort of summertime pestilence.

As Lewis puts it: “It’s a matter of being careful what you wish for.”

People with information on bat colonies near them can contact Susan Gallo at Maine Audubon either by email (sgallo@maineaudubon.org) or by phone at 207-781-6180 ext. 216.

More information is also posted on Maine Audubon’s website at maineaudubon.org/bats.

Also, Gallo is pulling together resources to help people who want to get bats out of their homes. Go to maineaudubon.org/bats. However, “if people want to get bats out of their non-living spaces like attics/garages/etc.,  they should wait until late summer – the end of July or early August – to do so, as they are all having their babies now and those babies won’t be gone until August. If there’s any way we can convince people to put up replacement bat roost boxes, that would be a bonus.”

Pet or pariah? Your bat stories

We polled our readers on their feelings about bats. Within minutes, we had dozens of responses, the main reaction being some variation of “Eek!” However, if you read carefully, you’ll find the odd two or three people who have no problem with the creatures and who have even come to welcome them as our nightly neighbors.

But mostly “Eek!”

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