Rescuing Sarah

Sarah, at Bat World Sanctuary

We initially heard about Sarah early in the year through Pennsylvania Bat Rescue,  a nonprofit group doing a tremendous job for the bats of PA. Founder Steph Morlock became aware of a young Egyptian fruit bat who was for sale locally in the exotic pet trade. Steph contacted the seller, who explained that the youngster was the offspring of a pair of fruit bats she owned. She said the youngster was “aggressive” and did not want to be handled, so she isolated the young female in a small cage and kept her in the hallway all alone. Steph contacted us and we immediately made arrangements to purchase the bat. As stated in our Mini S Rescue article on page 6, we do not approve of purchasing bats as that only serves to propagate the pet trade. However, there are exceptions, such as cases like this, where a pet trade dealer is not involved and the life of a bat is at stake.

With the help of Steph, we were able to procure little Sarah and get her to the safe and loving hands of PA Bat Rescue. We had just started making arrangements to get Sarah to TX when the pandemic hit. With travel being very limited for a long period, Sarah remained at PA Bat Rescue for the next four months. During that time she displayed no aggression whatsoever and learned to trust her caregivers enough to accept treats.

In July, Bat World volunteer extraordinaire Jennifer Danzler flew to PA and drove little Sarah from PA to TX to bring Sarah home. She is pictured below, settled in with her new forever family.

Sarah the morning following her introduction to the rescued Egyptian fruit bat colony at Bat World Sanctuary. Many of these bats came from similar situations as Sarah. In this photo her head marked is marked in green so we could keep track of her as she settled in. Sarah now has a huge indoor-outdoor flight enclosure and over 80 friends of her own kind.