Flight of the Orphaned Bats

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Bat World
Head of Bat World NOVA and a volunteer rehabilitator of sick, injured or abandoned bats, Leslie Sturgesher rescues orphans, checks on a large colony in a McLean park and dispells myths.

"He's trying to nurse on me," she says.

Flipping the pup onto its back, she shows why it can't really be hungry. A tiny white pouch, visible through the translucent skin, is proof that its belly is still full of milk.

As a girl, on camping trips with her parents or in the garden of her parents' home in Silver Spring, Sturges showed a fondness for snakes and lizards.

Now, bats -- real and symbolic -- fill her world. A twig wreath of bats hangs from her door knocker. On her ears are silver earrings of fruit bats in upside-down repose. Out in the driveway sits her bat mobile: a Toyota Scion -- black, naturally -- with "BAT RESQ" on the license plate.

Sturges said it was hard at first to keep her emotional distance from the rescue bats, wanting to keep some as pets. She still becomes fond of some pups, but she never forgets that they belong in the wild.

And so, recently, Sturges, her wheat-colored hair bunched up around a miner's light, stood in inky darkness preparing to say bon voyage to a few friends.

One of the bats skittered around and around her gloved hand. Then it fluttered its ragged black wings and was gone.

"It's just like this little shadow takes off, and you never see them again," she said.