The leaves crunching under your feet and frost on your windows in the morning signal that fall is in full swing. It is nearly Halloween.

Orange pumpkins, warty-nosed witches and fake cobwebs festoon every store that you frequent. The outline of one of the most formidable symbols of creepiness, a bat, adorns practically every Halloween costume or decoration.

Bats conjure filth, disease and evil in many folk’s minds, but without them there would be less banana cream pie, peach cobbler or even tequila.

“The local grocery store would not be the same without products that depend on bats for their survival,” said Brooke Slack, wildlife biologist in the wildlife diversity program of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “Wild stocks of bananas, avocadoes, dates, figs, peaches, mangoes, cloves, cashews and agave are all pollinated by bats.”

Tequila is produced from the agave plant.

Bats also eat insects – such as mosquitoes n that people find annoying. Kentucky has 14 species of bats. All eat insects. “A single little brown bat can catch up to 1,200 insects in just one hour during peak feeding activity,” Slack explained. “Many landowners report a noticeable reduction in insects around their property when bats are present. Bats are the only major predator of night-flying insects.”

Many myths surround bats, such as the old canard that bats lay their eggs in people’s hair or suck human blood.

Laura Burford, assistant director of the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife’s Information and Education Division, conducted her master’s degree research on the Virginia big-eared bat at the University of Kentucky. The egg myth is easy to dispel. “Bats couldn’t lay an egg if they wanted to,” she said. “They are mammals. In fact, they are the only flying mammal.”

The egg-laying misconception stems from outdoor lighting and bat feeding behavior. At night, most people gather near light sources outside. This same light draws insects, which in turn attract bats. Bats feed with a swooping motion and dive near you while chasing insects near outdoor lighting, hence the fear of bats getting in your hair.

The novels of Bram Stoker about the vampire Dracula created a worldwide symbol of the blood-sucking bat that’s endured for centuries. That’s another myth.

“We don’t have any blood sucking bats in the United States,” Burford explained. “The three species of bats that do consume blood generally feed off livestock, not humans.”

Bats are not blind, either. It’s just that their eyes, like ours, are not well adapted to see at night. Instead, bats emit high frequency sounds that bounce off objects to determine size, shape and directional movement, similar to the way radar works. Bats can detect something as fine as a human hair in total darkness.

Bats also help farmers by eating destructive insects such as the cutworm, corn-borer moth and the cucumber beetle. Cucumber beetles consume corn and spinach, but their larvae, corn rootworms, decrease corn productivity by 10 to 13 percent. A colony of 150 brown bats can eat nearly 40,000 cucumber beetles in a summer season. Their feeding binge prevents the birth of 18 million corn rootworms.

Bats are not filthy, disease-spreading evil creatures. They pollinate more than 300 species of fruit, eat noxious insects and save farmers money. Don’t persecute bats. They are an important component of Earth’s web of life.

Author Lee McClellan is an award-winning associate editor for Kentucky Afield magazine, the official publication of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. He is a life-long hunter and angler, with a passion for smallmouth bass fishing.