When Sheila Kearns ordered her Christmas tree she had no idea it will be delivered with an unwanted guest - a bat. The nocturnal mammal hidden among the branches, hitched a ride on the tree and soon found itself in Kearns' home after a short trip from Holloway's Christmas Tree Farm in Nipomo. Kearns says while she was decorating the tree she felt like being pricked, but at that time she thought it was the pine needles. However, it didn't take her too long to make out where the wound came from. The next morning, Kearns woke up to find a bat hanging upside down in her home.

A local bat remover has taken the habit of appearing in public donned in a Batman costume and driving his own Batmobile, a Chrysler Prowler fitted with bat emblems. Even his office, appropriately called the Bat Cave 1, has the "Batman" TV show theme playing for callers on hold. Bats are the top cause of human rabies in the U. S. have taken to staying in attics of the town's Antebellum and Greek Revival mansions.

As Halloween approaches, the members of London Vampyre Group are searching for new recruits to participate in wild parties, trips to Transylvania and bat spotting nights. However, it ruled out coffin-dwelling and blood drinkers. LVG's Mick Smith, 57, told Reuters in an interview in a London pub, "People who think they're un-dead, hundreds of years old, or that you have to drink blood if you're interested in the dark side of things, we can put them right on that. "

An Iowa woman, 60, was in for a surprise when she discovered a dead bat in her tea mug only after sipping all day from the cup. The brown bat was about the size of two tea bags. The woman, who refused to identify herself, forwarded the bat to the Siouxland health office.

What do you get when you combine a man wielding a hammer, another man swinging a baseball bat, and yet another waving a weed-trimmer? Instead of a witty punch line, authorities in St. Johns County got to sort out a lawn brawl that sent one man to the hospital. The brawl occurred after a lawn service supervisor criticized one of his worker's grass-cutting skills, according to The Florida Times-Union.