Last week I reported that Romania is trying to get in on the whole Pokemon Go craze, by offering a special Dracula bat monster that enthusiasts can chase and catch by visiting sites in that country of historical importance to the real life Dracula, Vlad III “The Impaler.” Now this week comes a report of a Pokemon player who went out in search of an imaginary cartoon creature and ended up rescuing a baby bat. A New York woman named Olivia Case took her three-year-old daughter Lucy out hunting Pokemon. (I’m sure it was the child’s idea.) They were looking for something called a “dratini,” which is a little blue dragon. (A dragon. How perfect. I don’t know if Ms. Case is aware that the word “Dracula” literally translates as “Son of the Dragon,” but this couldn’t have been more poetically appropriate unless a dratini was a vampire bat.) Seeking the Pokemon in the parking lot of a washette (that’s a Southern term for a Laundromat), the lady and her daughter instead found an injured baby bat.
The little bat ended up at the Wild Things Sanctuary in Ithaca, New York. Ms. Case arrived at the animal hospital, appropriately enough, at midnight. (I see the potential for a children’s book, here, something along the lines of Bunnicula.) Victoria Campbell, an expert in bat rehabilitation and the owner of the wildlife sanctuary, says that she’s seeing all sorts of rescued animals, all thanks to Pokemon players.
