‘Bat Lady’ Defends Creatures Of The Night

Medical Lake’s Donna Hensley has a nightmarish public relations problem: How does she get the public to warm up to bats?

Americans have reviled these leather-winged creatures of the night since Hollywood gave us our first taste of Transylvania and the undead blood-suckers who feed there.

“Bela Lugosi and Dracula have done a real number on bats,” concedes Hensley, 40, a conservation biologist whose lifetime devotion to the misunderstood and oft-maligned critters earned her the nickname “Bat Lady.”

OK, forget the movies. What about poor little Jerry Mitchell? The Spokane first-grader was bitten by a rabid bat the other day during a field trip at Manito Park. Now the hapless lad needs a series of injections to ward off the potentially fatal disease.

“He shouldn’t have picked that bat up,” counters the bat advocate. “Any wild animal you can walk up to and touch is obviously sick.”

Hensley speaks in a soothing Texas drawl. She moved here last winter with husband Steve Stein, a biology professor at Eastern Washington University.

Before that she roamed the world, driven by a thirst for bat knowledge. She co-wrote “The Bat House Builder’s Handbook,” which has sold 150,000 copies.

While working for Austin-based Bat Conversation International, Hensley helped the Texas Department of Transportation design “bat-friendly” highway bridges where bats by the millions roost in peace.

Hensley developed her unusual passion as a child. While other girls played indoors with Barbies, Hensley spent evenings watching bats zig and zag after bugs.

“It’s like the underdog at a football game,” she says. “I just felt sorry for them.”

Like a missionary, Hensley wants to enlighten unbelievers. She says bats are vital to the ecosystem.

Although we rarely see them, bats are the second-most plentiful order of mammals. (Rodents are first.) They gobble insects by the tons. Some pollen-eating bats help plants and fruits reproduce.

Sure, there are vampire bats. But they rarely bite humans and never kill their victims. As for rabies, Hensley says only 28 people in North America have contracted the disease from bats since the 1940s. Dog bites account for 50 to 60 rabies cases every year.

Mark your calendars. Hensley will share her bat lore in a free lecture and slide show on bats and their benefits at 7 p.m. June 25 at the Spokane Valley library.

She can’t do it alone. Whenever Hensley speaks she brings along Sweetie, a pet male African fruit bat that, well, looks like a little Chihuahua with wings.

“These little innocuous things get all the bad press,” she says, allowing the precocious Sweetie to hang upside down from her hand. “But bats aren’t bad. It’s one of those cultural myths.”

Myths can be dangerous all the same.

Hensley knows of one man who broke his arm during a bat battle. “Yeah, he took a swing at it with a tennis racket and threw his arm into a door.”

Years ago, my wife and I narrowly survived a similar attack. We were in a cabin near Glacier National Park when one of Bat Lady’s innocuous flying demons from hell began swooping at us.

My wife dove behind the bed to protect the baby. I asserted my manhood by running around the room in my underwear, gibbering and flailing my arms like a Pentecostal worshiper.

I finally composed myself enough to put on pants and race to the motel office. “Bat. In room. Must. Save. Baby,” I stammered to the sleepy-eyed manager.

The man told me to wait and disappeared. I assumed he was going after his shotgun or a flame thrower.

He returned with a paper sack.

“Put the big, bad thing in that and shake it outside,” he said just before slamming the door in my face.

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