Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1894 — VAMPIRE BATS. [ARTICLE]

VAMPIRE BATS.

The Panama Variety Is the Pest of Cattle, but Will Not Touch Men. There are some, drawbacks to the Isthmian cattle business that would rather astonish the American cowboy were he to go there. Chief of these is the vampire bat, says a correspondent of the New York Sun. One reads stories of the vampire sucking the blood of human beings, and at least two books by naturalists of repute say that these bats do suck human blood. Vampire bats are found by the thousand in Veraguas and Chlriqul. I asked at every place for a person whose blood had been sucked by vampires, but could not find a soul, and yet people sleep out of dpors without even a blanket to protect them sleep bareheaded and barefooted. The vampire had every chance to alight on the human big toe, as he Is said to do. and while seething the foot with its fanning wings to suck out the life blood. I could not find any such case, however, nor had an observant Englishman, C.Preedy,who had lived twenty years in David, ever found any. But the vampire is the pest of the cattlemen. He is particularly fond of veal blood, but older stock and horses, colts, mules, and burros all suffer. I did not catch a vampire at his work, though I saw hundreds of them, but the cattlemen all tell the same story. The vampire settles somewhere on the back of the beast in the pasture at night, and then, while slowly fanning its wings to and frft, cuts out a circular piece of skin one-quarter of an inch in diameter. Through this hole he sucks the blood till satisfied. One wound would be of little consequence, nor would the loss of blood do much damage, were that all, but a half dozen vampires may feast on one poor calf or on the back of a sad-dle-horse in one night The calf is badly weakened by the loss of blood, while a saddle-horse so served is worthless until the wounds are entirely healed. But that is not the worst result of the bite. The region swarms with a pestiferous fly that soon after daylight finds the wouqd and lays eggs in it. Unless the wound is properly cleaned and dressed with a waxy salve within twenty-four hours after the vampire’s attack, the animal will be destroyed by the progeny of the fly. The percentage of calves thus killed is large, in spite of the watchfulness of the cow-herders.