It’s about time we went a bit batty

Donal Hickey takes flight with Ireland’s bats.

BRAM STOKER, the Dublin-born writer, has a lot to answer for. It was he that gave bats a bad name, something that lingers on a century later.

Stoker had Count Dracula flying around London as a blood-sucking bat and, though pure fiction, people continue to associate bats with the sinister and macabre. True, bats are creatures of the night and are seen at their most active around dusk as they feed on air-borne insects, but bats are harmless to humans.