I visited one house where the owner wanted the bats removed because they were worried that the droppings would spontaneously combust & set fire to the house. I think it was based on a case where the cause of a fire was not known so someone had speculated about the bat poo & it was reported as the cause.
I remember one chap who told me they would eat his eyes and give him pneumonia. Struggled not to laugh
I was going to say something similar , I am sure I read that bats “peck your eyes”
I heard that a lot of people, many in America, but possibly here too, that bats can give you Coronavirus
A quick thought – does anyone fancy doing a quick video debunking their ‘myth’?
Oh another, I just remembered a lady who insisted that when she was walking around a local fishing lake the bats would come down and eat ready salted crisps off her shoulder.
I’d forgotten this one.
Another favourite was a neighbour who upon seeing us in the front garden asked if we were the people that ‘kept’ bats. We said we did.
She then told us that she didnt like them and often saw one or two flying in her garden and could we keep them in rather than let them out for a fly.
She even suggested using some sort of ‘lead’
There’s the don’t go out at night without a headscarf or otherwise bats will get tangled in your hair and you will have to have it all cut off. That then gets changed to do go out at night as you will have to have all your hair cut off if a bat gets stuck in it. Interesting way to try to keep teenage girls in at night lol
I always get asked about vampires (and not just by kids, many of whom know that we don’t have vampire bats over here!)
One man asked me if bats were a cross between moles and birds. I could see the logic but not the biology. A number of builders have told me that they’ve found bats’ nests though, so perhaps it’s true!
I had someone ask me where they made their nests
* Isn’t it a lovely idea? I bet they would make amazing nests 😀
I liked this: At a school session, a boy asked me how do you tell a boy bat from a girl bat?
Not wanting to say the word penis and have a class full of giggling 7-year-olds, I replied “well it’s the same as you. What do you have that the girls don’t have?”
He thought for a minute then said …… “short hair”
???
So that’s how you tell them apart, the males have short hair!
Some more common myths:
http://www.northbucksbatgroup.org.uk/myths.html
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/five-myth-busting-bat-facts