Next time you’re out getting sloshed at the cantina, take a moment to thank a leathery winged mammal. “Bats are one of the main pollinators of the agave plant,” says John Bassett, a retired UW biomedical researcher. “Without bats, there would be no margaritas. People either love or hate bats, but when you really learn about them, there’s a lot of ‘Gee whiz!’ moments.”

Bassett is also a proud 10-year member of Lynnwood’s Bats Northwest, a group founded in 1996 to help protect Pacific Northwest bat populations through conservation and education. “Bats get a bad name,” he explains, “because of one type of bat”—the blood-eating vampire bat, which he calls “the bad boys of the bat world.” But, Bassett says, they’re rare—“only three species out of something like 1,200, and they only live in Central and South America. The 15 species of bats in Washington state all just eat bugs.” It goes without saying that without bats, there would be way more mosquitoes and flies in Seattle than any of us would be comfortable with.

According to Bassett, some of the best bat viewing in Seattle is at Greenlake; if you hang out after dusk settles, you can see them flitting over the water looking for dinner. They’re easier to spot during the summer, which is when Bats Northwest hosts bat-watching sessions, but Bassett says you can still see them now if you look hard enough.

Sometimes they’ll come to you. This past July, 270 flew into the attic of a Victorian home in Columbia City and took up residence. Rather than freaking out, the home owners simply closed off the attic, got rabies shots (fewer than one percent of bats have rabies), and invited Bassett’s group to come and help host neighborhood bat viewings on the front lawn at night, when the colony would fly out in small bursts to search for food.

“As long as there’s water and bugs, you can find bats,” Bassett says. “Just don’t touch them and you’ll be OK.”

Find out more at batsnorthwest.org.

ksears@seattleweekly.com