It was an ordinary day. Reading a Lancaster Newspaper column titled "Creature Comforts" written by Ad Crable and found that there is a woman in nearby Marietta, Pennsylvania that loves bats. Not the kind that you play baseball with, but the kind that fly! You know...the spooky kind. The column told of a local woman who devotes her retirement years to rehabbing 'Misunderstood', vital bats. Her name is Rosemarie Curcio and she lives in a bungalow in Marietta, Pennsylvania. 
Her bungalow is used to help orphaned bat pups or injure adults by bringing them back to health so they can stretch their wings and flit around before being released back into the wild. Can you picture doing that in your home? Me neither! Well, the newspaper story said that with the devastating white-nose syndrome disease nearly wiping out Pennsylvania's colony bats in the past 15 years and the Hollywood relegating the flying mammal to fearful bloodsucking creatures, we need more bat rehabilitates like Rosemarie. She is one of only three in the state that specializes in keeping bats alive. For more than 13 years as a bat rehabilitator, working with the nonprofit Raven Ridge Wildlife Center in nearly Washington Boro, the retired special education teacher from New York has gone all in, providing around-the-clock care for an unpopular, but important species. She does so...since most people hate them! Do you? Do you think they are ugly? You do know that bats have a propensity for devouring insects that is necessary for food production! You like to eat? Well, you can't hate bats and eat....too! Hey, bats offer free labor by eating biting insects to spare you pain while lounging in your yard. Its can eat up to 1,000 bugs in a night. Bet you can't do that! Partly with funding from Raven Ridge and partly with her own money, Rosemarie has transformed her home's underground floor topiary lab, part exercise gym for the flying mammals that come out at night. Year-round, people from Lancaster and surrounding counties bring her bats. Bats that have made it inside homes and are not welcome there, injured bats, baby bats that have fallen from colonial roosts. The pups, another name for the baby bats, take the most devotion to get back in the skies. Curcio has to arise every two to three hours around the clock for hand feeding. The worst and most heartbreaking part for Curcio are the bats that get plastered to that sticky tape that is wrapped around trees, in so many neighborhoods, to catch bugs. Curcio estimates she has treated more than 1,000 bats to date. But, not all humans hate bats! There was one human who last month was walking around Penn Square in downtown Lancaster and was horrified to watch an object flutter from the sky like a moth and land on the concrete sidewalk at the base of Lancaster's Griest Building. He straddled the creature to keep it from being stepped on. With a carryout container provided by the Shot & Bottle Store, he carried off the bat and found out about Curcio. She speculated that the adult female big brown bat was rousted from hibernation by a spell of warm weather, then became too sluggish when it got cold again. She administered a parasite treatment and rabies vaccination, something she does for every incoming bat. She nursed the bat back to health shortly afterward and released it into a bat colony. It is necessary for bats to be released into a bat colony where they can find an existing maternity colony because the adult females teach others how to hunt and other behaviors. "Humans can't teach bats how to be bats," she said. Many of the bats that she releases are in a barn in Chester County. Until they are put back into the wild, she cares for them with a steady diet of live mealworms. The individual bats stay in hamster cages and pet carriers that are kept in the dark, under towels. In 2022, she took in and treated more than 100 bats. At times she coordinates with Bat World Sanctuary in Texas if she has too many bats on hand. "The best thing for bats is to be rehabbed offsite in a quiet area with one person. That's why we have been able to rehabilitate so many bats. Rosemarie is a wonderful and caring person who treats her bats at her Diamond Rock Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in Chester county. She is hoping to build a new outdoors flight center for bats in her backyard. If you care to make a donation you can send it to "Raven Ridge Wildlife Center" website at ravenridgewildlifecenterorg. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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