Things have been getting pretty "batty" in recent weeks.  A bat decides to crash a meeting regarding road signs in Epping, New Hampshire, startling the members within. Seemingly not content with this, a second bat decides to become a stowaway on a Delta Airlines flight, causing quite a stir, and requiring the plane to turn around so the small flying mammal could be released safely. Perhaps he was trying out to be a stunt-double for Fox McCloud?

Sixes Wild: Manifest Destiny by Tempe O’Kun. Illustrated by ShinigamiGirl. St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, June 2011 Paperback $15.95 (vii + 147 pages)

This slim volume is described on the Sofawolf LiveJournal as "a straight western crossdressing romance." It is more a straight Western, except for steamy interludes where the crossdressing hare gunslinger and the fruit bat sheriff lose their clothes and get into each other’s fur.

Sixes Wild is intended for an adult audience only and contains explicit sexual material of Male/Female nature. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18.

This stereotypical Frontier drama, set in a small town in Arizona, is an unusual mixture of funny animals and anthropomorphics. Most of the folk of White Rock are typical funny animal characters who could just as easily have been humans: Six (Six Shooter), the hare outlaw; Doc Richards, the fox saloon-keeper; Harding, the bloodhound deputy sheriff; Morgan, the squirrel farrier; the ’yote native Americans; Morris, the villain’s marmot henchman; and so forth.

And then there is Jordan Blake, the fruit bat sheriff.

The BBC celebrates the successes of the Russian Tiger Response Team, while noting that a cull is not likely to be successful in the case of the white-nosed bats.

Also recently covered was the death of Wombles creator Elisabeth Beresford.

Bats in eastern parts of the United States and Canada are dying out from a new disease.

White-nose syndrome, named for the white fungi on muzzles and wings, makes bats restless, depleting their reserves of body fat during hibernation. The fungi – first found in February 2006 in a New York cave – are considered the likely cause of the disease.

According to a Wired article, biologist Winifred Frick said: "Yes, we had the empirical observations that cave floors were littered with dead bats. [...] But nobody had quantified the impact to the populations. We didn’t know what those die-offs meant to population viability as a species."

Frick and her colleagues analyzed the last 30 years of population data for the most common and most-studied species of bat in North America, the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). If recent trends continue, the researchers predict a "99 percent chance of regional extinction of little brown myotis within the next 16 years."

Silverwing, a new 13-episode animated series produced by Bardel Entertainment, will be aired in Canada on Teletoon, starting on Sept. 6th and 7th (check local listings for showtimes). Based on the characters from Kenneth Oppel's young adult novels, Silverwing, Sunwing and Firewing, the series follows the coming-of-age story of a bat named Shade and his bat colony.

The anti-clotting enzyme desmoteplase, found in the saliva of vampire bats, is being developed as a medication to treat stroke and heart-attack victims.