Ranch Style Home With Porch

In the darkness of night, N.Va.'s bat lady tends to her fragile wards

A bit beyond the Beltway, as the Virginia suburbs creep toward wilderness, in a tranquil enclave of ranch-style homes called the Woods of Ilda, on a dead-end street cloaked by nightfall, over a porch and into a cute two-story home and down carpeted steps, through a cluttered rec room, beyond two sets of doors and a curtain of plastic sheeting, in a concrete-floored hideaway where the temperature is 82.2 degrees and the humidity is 56 percent, just past a refrigerator stocked with mealworms and Michelob Light, the bat lady is at work in the shadows.

She decapitates a squirming mealworm with her gloved thumb and feeds it with forceps to an injured, .014-ounce Eastern pip­is­trelle bat that probably was creamed by a car.

It is a sad, delicate scene.

The bat clicks its tiny teeth around the mealworm. When it was dropped off at the Sturges residence a week ago by someone who found it on the side of the road, the bat couldn’t spread its wings or lift its ears. Now it can kind of do both. And it’s eating enthusiastically.

“That’s my girl,” the bat lady says.

Leslie Sturges — 50, vibrant, funny, tender — rehabilitates bats: the orphaned, the injured, in small cages in what anyone else would call the laundry room but in this case is technically a regional rescue center and the headquarters for Save Lucy , a nonprofit Sturges started to raise awareness of white-nose syndrome , which is destroying North American bats.

The basement smells pretty good, considering. Only the faint whiff of guano (i.e., bat poop) and frass (i.e., bug poop).

It’s 10 p.m. Friday, and the bat lady’s husband, Rich, is watching the feeding routine with a stemless glass of red wine. He met Leslie at the Summit Point race track in West Virginia, back when he used to race motorcycles and she was a corner worker waving flags. He liked her because she was smart and funny and rejected him twice. She was into lizards and turtles then. Ten years ago, she got into bats.

“It’s made me crazy, hasn’t it?” Leslie asks, looking up from feeding a frisky bat named Jorge. Her eyes are magnified by rectangular glasses. Her headlamp shoots a beam of blue light at her husband.

“Yes,” says Rich, a naval architect.

Bat rehabilitation consumes the time outside her day job as a park naturalist in Montgomery County. During early summertime pup season, she’s up every three hours overnight for feedings. Other volunteers help with caregiving, but Leslie rarely goes on vacation, even for a weekend. The bats need her.

Articles 20VN | Ranch Style Home Plans For Elegant, Affordable ...

Ranch Style Home Plans have many advantages for suburban family living; and are also popular with oldsters who can't climb stairways as easily as they used to. Ranch style architecture originated in the United States in the 1920's, and it became very popular after World War II as cities expanded into suburbs and inexpensive tract homes were needed by a growing populace. Ranch style houses are most popular where land is inexpensive and the weather is mild, since these homes particularly lend themselves to outdoor living. The low, earth hugging look with clean, modern lines of the ranch style is derived from Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style architecture.

Ranch style homes are usually long and low with a bare minimum of interior and exterior decoration. The idea is to create a casual and informal lifestyle, usually with access to the outdoors via large plate glass windows, sliding glass doors, and patios or decks. Ranch style home plans normally imply a single story construction with a low and long roof line, with a cross- or side- gabled or hip roof. Eaves are usually large and overhanging. Small ranch house plans tend to be simple rectangles; but there are larger designs which can be have L or U shapes surrounding a courtyard in the center visible from the living areas. Frequently there are sliding glass doors which open onto patios, or large picture windows in the living and dining areas. The design often includes an attached garage as well as patio area. Also, the exteriors are usually of brick, wood, or stucco with simple or rustic interior décor and exterior trim.

The basic idea behind the ranch style is that the major room areas in the house flow one into the other, rather than being small divided-up spaces as in other architectural styles. The access from the attached garage flows into the kitchen, to the dining area, to the living area, and to the bedrooms. The feeling of a ranch style house is one of openness and sweeping - sweeping vistas of the out-of-doors through picture windows and sliding glass panels, which open onto patios or porches where much summer living takes place. Also characteristic of the ranch style are open floor plans which permit rooms to serve multiple purposes. Ranch style houses frequently include separate family, living, and dining areas which can be converted as needed into entertaining or hobby areas, or into extra bedrooms when required. Although a single level ranch house plan with front porch or patio is the norm, there are also split level ranch houses and raised ranch houses which have more than one level of space. Also, the traditional simple and utilitarian interior décor is often embellished with accents typical of Colonial or Mediterranean architectural styles. The simplicity of the basic ranch style design and trim provides a good base for many different aesthetics in interior decoration.

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