BRIDGEPORT — Steve might be the strangest guy in the neighborhood.
Steve sleeps 18 hours a day at the house of Scott Heinrichs, the animal-loving, life-long punk rock junkie who often hand feeds him raw string beans from Cermak Fresh Market.
Steve has long limbs, is practically blind and uses the bathroom just once a week.
Meet Steve, Bridgeport's cutest — and only — sloth.
Yep, that's right: A three-year-old sloth that happens to live in your neighborhood.
Steve's one of about 20 animals you’ll find at Heinrichs’ Bridgeport home, headquarters of the Flying Fox Conservation Fund, a non-profit group that wants to protect endangered fruit bats.
The wildlife professional acquired his animals through conservation groups — or in the wild.
Steve has many wild roommates too — like Fang, the Bat-eared fox.
A canine, Fang will sniff you like a dog and lay at your feet when he's looking for affection. When he's nervous, he makes a high-pitch chuckling sound, unlike any dog's bark you ever heard.
Then there's Zack, the mouse opossum:
Left to his own devices, Zack will crawl all over your head and shoulders and dangle from your fingers with his long, strong tail.
And there's this guy, Sammy, the straw-colored fruit bat:
Doesn't look too scary, right? Often called “flying foxes,” fruit bats do not look like a bat you might see swoop into a horror movie scene. They’re quite gentle, eating bananas, dates, avocados and mangos.
For nearly three decades, Heinrichs, a career animal keeper, has traveled the world as a wildlife educator and bat expert. He started the Flying Fox Conservation Fund in 1996 to save fruit bats, craved in many culinary circles as a delicacy.
It's a planet-threatening problem, Heinrichs said.
“They’re the most important mammal on the planet,” Heinrichs said. “If you lose bats, you’re going to lose the rain forest, you’re going to lose the desert."
Desert-dwelling bats pollinate plants like cactus and agave. “You wouldn’t have tequila if you didn’t have bats,” said Heinrichs, who enjoys the occasional margarita.
The fruit bat is the sole pollinator of more than 400 plants in our planet’s tropical areas, where we harvest papaya, coffee and mango.
In Illinois, there are 12 different species of bats providing a service that sounds pretty sweet. A large brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitos in an hour.
Sure, Heinrichs has clasped fingers with gorillas, fed lions and stood beneath towering elephants, but his favorite animal will always be the bat.
During the warmest months of the year, you might catch Heinrichs and his cast of creatures at birthday parties or schools, where he teaches students about exotic animals. He recently provided the entertainment at St. Barbara's annual Pasta Dinner. The shows are in line with Heinrichs' mission: To educate the public about the fruit bat's vital role in nature.
The 56-year-old animal keeper grew up in West Humbolt Park, where he got his first pet, a guinea pig, at a pet shop on North Avenue.
“I was an animal-crazy kid growing up on the west side of Chicago, catching grasshoppers,” he said. “When I was a teenager, on Sundays in the Winter, I’d just go to the zoo.”
Before he’d get to the cages, Heinrichs quizzed himself on the animals and their countries of origin.
In 1981, Heinrichs landed his dream job: a zookeeper at Lincoln Park Zoo, where he spent 14 years taking care of the majority of the zoo's inhabitants.
When he started the gig, Heinrichs feared bats. Then he raised a baby bat and found himself smitten for the world's only — and often misunderstood — flying mammal.
He eventually signed up with Earthwatch, an organization that allows you to pay a fee to study with scientists in the field, and traveled to Costa Rica to learn more about bats.
In the jungles of Central America, Heinrichs learned how to use a net to capture bats and measure them to keep scientific records.
The Philadelphia Zoo later offered him a job to be head keeper of small mammals. Though Heinrichs did not accept the job, he offered to help the zoo in another way.
The zoo had been looking to take in some vampire bats. Heinrichs saw an opportunity for adventure: “I said, ‘Well, I don’t want the job, but if you still want those vampire bats, I'll go out and collect them for you.'"
He ended up on a flight to Trinidad to collect the bats. During this time, he read even more about bats. Scientists at the time said 60 percent of bats in captivity die.
The numbers didn’t make sense to Heinrichs, who managed to keep almost 100 percent of his captured bats alive and well. Word soon got around that Heinrichs was the guy to call if you wanted bats at your zoo.
“That’s how I began traveling more and collecting bats around the world,” Heinrichs said.
Heinrich now spends much of his time taking care of Steve and the rest of the gang.
Outside his home, you'll find him giving talks about bats, teaching children about animals with his girlfriend, Christine Gomoll — the former drummer of the Demolition Doll Rods — and taking his 9-year-old daughter, Fern, to the zoo.
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