Saturday, February 21, 2009

Seattle's Home & Garden Show

I volunteered today inside the Convention Center (an engineering wonder that hovers over the top of Interstate-5) at Seattle's Home & Garden show. Luckily, my efforts were fun as I promoted native bats from inside the Bats Northwest booth.

While there, I talked to ridiculous amounts of people from all over Washington and Oregon and felt like Vanna White, pointing to the different styles of bat houses and repeatedly hugged the one that local bats favor most (the "rocket-box" style). I felt incredibly encouraged by all the enthusiasm -- gardeners seem to LOVE bats -- but after four hours I realized I was beginning to feel like a broken record; repeating the same anatomical and habitat information over so many times! (I felt very happy to end my shift.)

The following photos are just quick shots that I snapped around the inside of the Home & Garden show. There were so many incredibly beautiful floral and nature displays there -- a camera just cannot do the scenes justice.






















6 comments:

Fijufic said...

I have always loved bats for reasons beyond my comprehension.

Must be because they eat lots of insects....

Elaborate houses I must confess.

Bobby

SunTiger said...

Or . . . maybe you love bats because they're anatomy is very much like ours (solid bones w/marrow, they breast-feed their young and only produce one offspring per birthing season). What's more -- being like us -- they manage to fly by their own power. {{Hmmmmmm.}}

KIT said...

The photos are beautiful, even if they don't do the show justice. Thanks for sharing!
My brother and his wife put up bat houses when they were planning to seal-up the opening allowing the bats into their attic. Even so, once they sealed the attic they sealed the attic they had a lot more mosquitoes than ever before.

Hibiscus Moon said...

SunTiger, what is the best way to go about finding out more about my local bat species and providing habitat for them here in South Florida?

SunTiger said...

Kit ~ It's amazing -- but the National Wildlife Association reports that one small brown bat can consume up to 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour. I sure would not want to do anything to send a bat AWAY. :D (Thanks for your interesting comment).


Hibiscus Moon ~ You have a lot of the same bats we do here in Washington state (with exception to your yellow bat). Here's a link to Southern Florida Bats: http://www.floridabats.org/FloridaBats.htm

The University of Florida also published this bit of info: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/UW053

{Hope these websites help as a good starting point).

Hibiscus Moon said...

Wow...we have more bats than I had known about. I would like to build or buy a habitat for my backyard. Do you recommend a certain kind? I know you like that rocket one. I would like to look at that if I can bother you for more info. Thanks for all the info. you have already given me....about everything. :)

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