The French don't eat bat, neither do the Chinese. Spaniards arriving in Mexico named them vampire bats, a full 300 years before Bram Stoker wrote the book on vampires. Vampires drink only blood. Prefer chickens, cows, and pigs to humans, but mostly feed on sleeping birds. Sharp incisors make cuts so neat and shallow, there's rarely any pain, bat saliva makes blood flow freely, a long tongue curls into a tube and sucks the weeping wound, lapping tears of blood into a hungry mouth.
Vampire bats drop near their prey, scuttle softly over on wing tips.
What's a quiet anesthetized suck, less than a dozen human beings a year. What's that compared to the horror of facing a bowl of hot bat stew, bat leftovers and the rest. I look in my Audubon guide. Photographs, close-ups taken in broad daylight or by flash. I cannot warm up to bats.