Red Bat Release: To the MOON, Alice!

Cards and letters keep rolling in. I do appreciate the outpouring, and the beautiful sentiments that let me know how much Chet Baker meant to those of you who have written. I'm saving them. I won't lie: it's hard for me to read them, when I spend much of each day trying so damn hard to forget and get on with things. Lots of times I have to refrain from opening the mail until I'm in the right frame of mind, feeling bulletproof. My speaking schedule is packed, and while I don't much feel like being in public, the travel has been a blessing.  I'm trying to get back to my running routes, but I usually end up in a puddle of tears as I remember him so vividly, running in front of me, nosing at that log, jumping that ditch, eyeing those cattle. I remember all the places where he used to cross the road so he could keep an eye on oncoming cars. He was so smart about cars. I even remember the spots where he liked to stop for a poop. With all that's going on right now, running helps keep me grounded, centered and sane, but there's a fresh dart to the heart every time I go out. Maybe I need to find some new routes, ones that aren't haunted by sweet apparitions.

They say the Universe sends us what we need. When the timing's right, it's magic. I couldn't have received a better gift on the Very Bad Day of September 1 than a red bat in need of love, comfort and wasp larvae. On this, our third installment, the bat is being fed for the last time, in preparation for release.

This isn't a great photo, as it was taken in very low light, but look at the gorgeous lines of this little animal as she investigates the padded Critter Keeper that would be her home for three days and two nights. I purposely keep short-term rehab bats in small plastic containers with toweling or nonskid drawer liner as padding, to keep them from breaking their delicate finger bones should they beat their wings against the sides. This bat was a model guest. Every time I checked on her, day or night, she was either sleeping or preening--she wasted no time or energy that I saw, trying to find a way out.

I just love the long slender forearm, the hand part of the wing being folded along it, the jet-black webbing crinkled up between hand and forearm. Her hind leg is extended, joined by a membrane to the tail and the other hind leg. Her head is up, and she's taking in information with eyes and nose. Once you get used to bat architecture you can begin to appreciate what a beauty she is.

She looks deceptively big and blimpy here. Most of what you're seeing is fur and membrane. Her little body is slender, and if you squint you can see her sides--quite vole-like, with a little waist, even--and the outline of her tail. The big furry areas along her sides are her coat--the heavily furred patagium, or wing membrane, that, along with the furry tail membrane, allows this little marvel of adaptation to wrap herself up and survive midwinter temperatures, hanging by one foot from a twig in the woods, pretending to be a dead leaf. 

Red bats are migratory, and you'll see them flying through Halloween and even into winter. I've seen them hunting insects on warm late January days. A good number, surprisingly, may stay around to winter here in southeast Ohio. But most are thought to head south. An excellent article at the Bat Conservation International website explains red bat hibernation strategy. A study of 13 male red bats wintering in southern Missouri (hardly subtropical!) showed that when temperatures dropped below freezing, the bats did, too--from tree branch roosts to the leaf litter below! 

Radiotelemetry showed that red bats used leaf litter on exposed south-facing slopes for roosting, and that they left the litter when temperatures became mild, to forage at night for moths. They went deep into torpor when temperatures were cold, buried or sometimes completely exposed in the leaf litter. Their vivid red-brown coloration makes more sense when you think of them hibernating beneath an oak in the litter.

The realization that red bats might hibernate in leaf litter was born when bats in many parts of temperate North America were observed flying up from the forest floor during prescribed winter forest burns. This led to the radiotelemetry study by Brad Mormann and Miranda Milam from which I've excerpted these notes. 

 I'm pretty sure you weren't hibernating, lying there on your back on a warm drizzly evening, Missy. I don't know what you were up to, but it wasn't good.

I'll never tell. Thank you for the room and board. I'm feeling much, much better now.

 Let's take a look at some more videos! In this one, you can see more of her body as she relaxes in my glove. I'm barely holding her, as she's so absorbed in her feeding that escape is far from her mind. 

I love this one, for the way she tackles a nearly mature paper wasp pupa. WOW. 

This movie gives you some excellent Tiny Pink Tongue action. She's fed, watered and ready to fly.

 To the MOON, Alice!!

  


There were three people documenting this momentous event with iPhones: Shila, Bill, and Liam. All the video here is Liam's, except for this slo-mo Bill took. It's really cool because if you can make it out in the dim light, you can see Alice turning on her sonar just before she takes off. She opens her lips and flares them as she sends out sonar signals. And then she works her wings free and heads for the moon.

I can always tell when a bat is plotting escape from my glove when it lifts its head, opens its mouth and turns its head rapidly side to side. It's scanning its environment with sonar. I may not be able to hear its ultrasonic sonar clicks, but I can see it emitting them.

This is how it feels to release a strong, healthy red bat who might otherwise have died.

The night was one bat more beautiful, and that's way more beautiful than it was before.

More Red Bat! Now, With Shmoos!

I don't know about you, but I think the world needs more red bat videos. To that end, I have three one-minute shots of delight. Movies 4 and 5 depict the second feeding session for the little juvenile red bat found helpless on her back on a sandy playground in Reno, Ohio. The feeding session in the first two videos was from the morning after she was found. She'd had a nice big feeding the evening before, and had presumably rested all night in her towel-padded Critter Keeper.

So the next morning it was wonderful to see how much more lively and capable she was. I had to cut the wasp grubs up the evening before; this time she handles an older pupa with alacrity. It did my heart so much good to see her gain strength.

We chopped the videos up into one-minute segments because Instagram will take only one-minute videos. Liam, again, is videographer.

One of the coolest things about bats, I think, is the way they seem to get that you're trying to help them. They struggle a bit, but shove a nice juicy grub in their mouth and they're all over it, thank you thank you! I will eat that! You won't get any argument from me! This is delicious! More, please!

I suspect that if I'd had to keep this bat longer; i.e. if it were mid-winter and not safe to release her for several months, she'd be the kind who'd probably sit on top of my glove, accepting food from the forceps, needing no restraint at all. I love it when they get to that point. 

But this little bat is on the fast track to release. All I wanted to do was build her up so she could fly again, and send her on her way, for it is the height of red bat migration now and she has a long way to go. I hope that wherever she ends up, it's not ruined by that pill Irma.

This next one, Red Bat Movie 6, is my favorite feeding video. It was taken the next evening, the evening of her release. As you can see I had quite a time restraining her--she was fast and strong and she wanted out! And you may need to watch it a couple of times. In trying to catch her I scared her, of course, and she HIDES HER EYES twice. Once she ducks her head into my glove and the second time she covers her eyes with her sweet little wings. Ohhhh. I can hardly stand it. 

If you can watch this last video, and still say you "hate bats," well, I'm afraid I'm giving up on you. 

Leave a comment that starts with "EEEEEW" on my Facebook page and poof! I will make it disappear. It's one of my few magic tricks. 

Because under that incredibly soft plush red fur, frosted silver, is an old soul with hopes and dreams and terror, too, in her wee breastie. All she wants is to fly up to the moon again, sometime soon. And in my next post, she will get her wish.

LOVE HER. Love her fiercely, tenderly, as I do. If you're here and watching, that's the way to go--toward the light. If you want to pass it on, show that last video to somebody who "hates bats." 

P.S. Dark, rainy morning here, September 14. Birches turning gold, heading into fall fast. Talking on the phone, looking out the studio window. At 7:58 AM, the female bobcat who's taken James' place zoops out from behind the spruce, picks up a chipmunk like you'd pick up a dropped wallet--casually, easily--and melts back into the woods with her breakfast without even putting the birds up off the feeder. It. Was. Awesome. We've gone from nine omnipresent and gluttonous gray squirrels to None. 

No. Squirrels. That's a natural balance I can get behind. And waay better than James ever achieved. :D 

Come to think of it, I haven't seen Notch the naughty bunny--a regular each morning at the feeders-- for a week. Damn. That's what I get for falling in love with a Shmoo.**

RIP Notch. In heaven, Julie's lettuce, geraniums and lobelias are planted right in the ground. You won't even have to climb up into the planters.

**Shmoos were the creation of Al Capp, the brilliant cartoonist/creator of Li'l Abner. My DOD, who loved sly social satire, used to read Li'l Abner aloud to us at the breakfast table. This Wiki link will tell you more than you need to know about Shmoos. 

Little Bat, Lost

Friday, September 1, was an awful day. I'd pushed through August 30 and 31 thinking, oh, this isn't so bad, I'm relieved, actually. I've got work to do. I got up that day and gathered up all the trappings of a dog's life: the two nice clean beds,  the funky bed, the food, the treats...couldn't touch the collars and leashes yet, so I left them in the drawers. I wanted to get all the obvious stuff, the countertop and living room and studio stuff, out of my sight. I buried my nose in the funky bed a couple times and carried it out to put with the trash. I mean, you don't save a giant dirty dog bed just so you can smell it...or do you? No. You don't. Stop it. Stop crying. Put it in the can.

It was like that. Awful. Fighting with  myself the whole way, I drove to town with cans of expensive dog food and a 30 pound bag of Fromm's kibble that I'd recently opened. The cans rolled around in the back of the car, thrashing like a thing alive, and I fought back tears as the frugal child of Depression-era parents rounded the curves, determinedly taking all that good food back to the stores. I prayed that the customer service person at Giant Eagle would be the nice woman with frosted hair, and she was. She didn't bat an eye, understanding instantly why a person would up and buy $64 worth of canned dog food the same week her dog died. Crazy, hopeful heart, swimming up De Nile, hedging against reality. He can't be dying. Look. I have all this food.

 This kind and lovely woman looked me in the eyes and told me a story about her two elderly pugs that both went blind and developed diabetes, requiring special food and two shots each per day. She had to leave work at 9 AM, rush home, shoot them both up and feed them, then rush back, all on her brief break. Same thing at dinnertime. Two and a half years of this, before she finally hit the wall and admitted to herself that it wasn't fair to the dogs or her; that it was nothing but a holding pattern against the inevitable.  And she had them both put down on the same day. Good Lord. Crass as it sounds, she made me feel, I don't know...lucky... that Chet had been holding his own, more or less, until he wasn't. And that it was all so clear. We bonded. Dogs, man. They can lift you so high, but they can, through no fault of their own, rip your heart out, too. You can substitute "People" and "Love" in that sentence. "Life," while you're at it.

I went to my favorite pet store (the kind that has only shelter animals for adoption) and got sad faces and hugs from lovely Christy and Ethan. They took back the enormous bag of Fromm's, even though it had been opened. I felt humbled and grateful and appreciated in this small town. I felt embraced, figuratively and literally. I could buy people food with the money they gave me, and I did. It felt right. I was grateful. I seriously didn't know how much longer I could keep throwing fistfuls of money at poor Bacon, trying to keep him among the living. It had been a hard year and a half.

Prompted by the kindness I'd been shown, I was losing it again. At that moment, Shila texted to ask where I was, whether I was in town. (She's a little witchy, that way, and others). 

Yes, I'm in a parking lot in Marietta, crying, why do you ask?

Come to my office, and I'll give you a session, she wrote.

 I think that's about the only thing I'd have said yes to at that moment--cranio-sacral and polarity therapy from my best friend. Yes. Oh, yes.

So I drove out to Wellness Unlimited in Reno, Ohio, and lay on the table while Shila worked her magic on me, settling my nervous system, letting me cry and fall asleep three different times from the sheer comfort of healing touch and pure kindness, saving me yet again. After the session, Shila said, "Let's go out and gather some acorns for Jemima. The jays have been going crazy in the oaks out back." So we walked out to look for acorns on the ground. We couldn't find any. What were there were still small and very green, and hanging on the branches. Shila walked over to a second tree and I followed her. 

I will say here that I wasn't exactly sure why Shila wanted to gather acorns for Jemima, she who eats so well on chicken and rice and sweet corn and pecans. But I knew enough to follow her out into the back lot behind her office.

Under the second tree, we were distracted by an enormous orange and yellow wasp darting back and forth just above the ground. "Ooh look, a cicada killer! What's it got?"

The wasp was making repeated sallies at something very odd looking, lying on the ground. 

"Oh my God!" we said in unison. "It's a red bat!!"

The bat was in defensive posture, wings spread, but when we knelt beside it it brought its wings in and covered its eyes.  My heart got a brand new crack in it. I mean, look at that little creature, legs spread wide, covering its eyes, so afraid, so helpless.

Oh, sweetie. How did you get yourself in this pickle, here on the ground?

I can't tell you. I just want to cover my eyes and forget about it. I want you to go away. But the big wasp is scaring me so.

For one of North America's larger bats, it was so, so tiny. What looks like its junk here--the pink protrusion--is actually the base of its tail, which extends down into the well-furred tail membrane. Examining these photos, I can see (in retrospect) that it's a female, probably a juvenile. The other hint to that is the heavy frosting of her fur. Males are more uniformly red. I was way too excited to do a proper evaluation of this little bat's junk. I was programmed to receive, and get this bat into Zick's Hotel, Spa and Hostel for whatever she might need. And she'd be able to check out whenever she was ready.

Shila ran to fetch a towel and lidded plastic shoebox from her office while I fought off the urge to pick it up with my bare hands (never! even after two rabies shot series). It was a cool, rainy afternoon and the poor craithur was cool to the touch, nearly torpid. I couldn't divine what on earth it was doing lying on the ground. Red bats occasionally roost on the ground in leaf litter, but this one had nowhere to hide. I didn't know what the cicada killer had in mind by circling around and darting at the bat, but I knew it was nothing good. Could the wasp have stung it, hoping to paralyze it and carve it up for food, the way they do cicadas? What an awful thought!  And: Not on my watch! Begone, wasp!

Using the towel, we gently folded the bat up and put it in the Tupperware with the lid on tight. It'd be fine for the ride home. I started thinking about what I had at home to feed it. I'd had to throw out all three bins of homegrown mealworms when they became infested with mites, what a bummer! Teeming with lovely tiny worms, and a moving gray mat of mites. Nope. Not in my basement. Out they'd gone.

I couldn't think of a better food for a compromised bat than wasp larvae. I've resorted to robbing paper wasp nests many times in the past when I've been suddenly caught with a creature needing live food. I can't even remember now how I hit on it, but paper wasp larvae are the bomb, and easily obtainable, if you have the guts. I remember now that I might have gone into the combs I knocked out of my greenhouse out of curiosity, just to see the larvae and pupae in different stages, and then it occurred to me that the baby box turtles I was raising might appreciate them, and I was off, feeding wasp grubs to animals.

Having done this more than a few times, I have noticed, while harvesting wasp grubs, that in the past four years or so there is a situation with parasitic larvae in the combs. Pictured below are three healthy wasp grubs--the three big fat ones. Also in the picture are three parasitized wasp grubs--the small round shriveled ones with black heads. And there are five predatory larvae in with them (the thinner ones with tiny brown heads).  I suspected these to be the larvae of another wasp or perhaps a fly, because structurally they are similar, if a lot slimmer and more mobile. Sharp eyes of entomologist Sam Jaffe spotted lepidopteran characteristics (the prolegs are a dead giveaway!) He suggested Chalcoela iphitalis, the Sooty-winged Chalcoela moth, as the parasite.

This is a healthy paper wasp nest--you can see eggs and grubs in the cells. Also, the cells with silken roofs are not perforated. There are healthy maturing wasp pupae in the roofed cells.

This me holding the healthy nest next to one that is badly parasitized. It's dirty and full of silk layers, and all the caps that should have pupae beneath them are perforated in many places. They've been chewed through, and there are predatory larvae in the cells that should hold healthy paper wasp pupae. Ut-oh.

A possible culprit is here in Jim McCormac's excellent blogpost about a moth that bedevils paper wasps. Many thanks to awesome entomologist Ted MacRae for helping me try to figure out what these larvae might be.  And to  similarly awesome Sam Jaffe for pointing me to Sooty-winged Chalcoela. And to Ohio's pride, all around naturalist Jim McCormac for writing it up. If I'd been smart I'd have let some mature to see what they pupated into. But I had a hungry bat!! 

Inquiry fell behind the need to feed this beastlet. Between the three nests I knocked down (all I could find), I got enough larvae, both paper wasp and parasite, to feed the bat for four sessions.

And now, the bat. Movie 1 is her first feeding. Oh, she's so slow and cold and sad. But she gets a little more gusto with each juicy grub I give her.





She's perking up!



I fear I frightened her a bit with my chuckles and snorts. Look how much more lively she is after only three larvae!



Truly, I'd been so sad that finding this little waif and seeing her come back to life was almost too much for me to take. It was too sweet. I had to laugh in delight.

I just want to say that when Shila and I get together, stuff like this happens. She suggests we walk out into a light rain under some oak trees to look for acorns??? and we find no acorns. No, we stumble upon this magic little animal my favorite bat of all favorite bats who might have died had we not been right there, at that spot, at that moment.

The little voice is strong in Shila, and it's strong in me, and when we get together, it fairly shouts. And we listen. We listen hard.

Looking at a Red Bat, Part II

We're examining a road-killed red bat found August 15, 2013 along County Rd. 11A in Washington Co. Ohio. 

Oh my gosh, the tiniest most perfect hind feet ever. The claws reminded me of a hummingbird's, and they were extremely sticky--like handling a teasel burr. They were so deeply recurved that I imagined this little beast could hang from almost anything, and red bats do...they hang, usually by one foot, from a leaf petiole amidst vegetation when they are resting. These are largely solitary animals, and their red fur makes them look just like a dead leaf when they're roosting.

I got lost in the tail membrane for awhile. It hooked into a curve to make a sort of pouch.

Ventral surface, the membrane curved toward you. That's the bat's tail in the middle.

Here, I'm holding the membrane open with my fingers--you can see them through it. I'm so impressed by the heavy fur on the membrane. You don't see that on other bats. This, of course, is the bat's insect-catching apparatus--they collide with and dump moths and beetles into the pouch of the tail membrane, then double over in flight to crunch them down. 

With all that fur, the bat probably uses the tail pouch as a poncho, too.

Very impressed by the length of the tail. It starts up by my thumbnail!

The tail, extended. I'm always disarmed by bats' tiny leg bones, the way they stick out at right angles to the body and are trapped in membrane all around. There's no walking or even shuffling for bats...when grounded they scuttle, hitching along with wrists and paddling with the hind feet. But boy, they can make time that way. It takes some getting used to, watching bats scuttle around your feet. I've had time with them in the flight tent, especially my two girls Stella and Mirabel who got too fat to fly and were reduced to scuttling for awhile.

 This is the bat's belly, or ventral surface, and by the tiny bat junk and its bright red fur I could see it was a male. Females are more silvery-brown than fox red.

There is so much that is marvelous about bats. The amazing elasticity and translucent nano-thin wing membrane, for instance. The crenulation of the lower margin, the way the whole thing puckers like seersucker when the membrane is not stretched into use.

those fine, fine finger bones

so breakable if improperly housed. Bats must always be in padded surrounds in captivity--most people use rubber drawer liner over glass tank walls, or house them in fine nylon mesh reptile enclosures, or nylon picnic shelters, like mine. The big brown bats I've had, though, have been chewers, and would never have stayed in a small mesh reptarium. I'm waiting for one to figure out it can chew its way out of the flight tent, because oh, it can. Shh. Don't tell them that.

Had to have a look at the teeth, a bewitching shade of lavender. Don't worry. I used a pen to pry its lips apart.

There's that coloration on the wing again. Gorgeous.

The fur was minutely spangled with silver tips, like a dusting of stars across its nape.

And now, just so you don't think this sad little wreck is what red bats look like, just so you know what a difference the spark of life makes, the only red bat I've photographed alive, in Clermont Co. Ohio on a beautiful October day. Well, Hello, darling!!

A more perfect, winsome and endearing (furred) creature I've never seen before or since. (I am excluding my two children as newborns from this paradigm).  The story of how he was found, and what a difference he made to many young lives, at this link.

Yes, bats are always better alive than dead. But when we get the chance to sit down and look at one that's dead, we look.

Looking at a Red Bat

I opened Blogger to make a new post tonight. It said that I've written 1,700 posts since December 2005.  I'm trying to get my head around it, that I've sat down 1,700 times to do this, that I've had that many things to share. And yet...

My mild frustration these days is that I can't get to it all. Every single day I see or do or experience something I long to share. I often take several hundred photos in a single day. Videos, too. I squirrel them all away, wishing I could show them all to you. I'm keenly aware that the kinds of things I find where I live simply aren't available to everyone who enjoys this blog, and that's part of its appeal.

Or maybe they are, but you wouldn't pick them up with your bare hands. That's OK. I ain't skeert. Had my shots.

Serendipity: Unless I'd been jogging early in the morning along my county road, I likely never would have recognized the tiny bundle of russet fur on the asphalt as a red bat, freshly killed by a car. And because I am the Science Chimp, and to me certain roadkills represent a pearl beyond price, I picked it up and folded it gently into the cargo pocket of my shorts, saying a fervent prayer that I would remember there was a dead bat in my shorts before oh, I don't know, rolling down a hill or cooking dinner or putting the shorts in a drawer or sending them through the wash. 

 Look at that furry red tail membrane, folding up over his body!! It's his take-along blanket; he comes with his own pouch he can fold himself into.

I was so very sad to find it a past bat. The red bat is perhaps my favorite (although any bat I get to see is my bat du jour and de facto favorite ever). It's one of eastern North America's largest bats, but even so it's absolutely tiny by mammal standards.

 That's an average size facial tissue, and the wingspan is maybe 9" fully extended. The literature says it goes up to 13". Hmm. Maybe this is a pup? It seemed teeny to me, the body not even two inches with the tail folded under.

  I was taken by the sooty black and pink-trimmed wings, and by the cream colored stripe along the shoulder

and the two little headlights of white fur on the thumb joints, as well as the subtle necklace of white around the neck. He looked as if he were wearing a costume head.

Note the rounded ears, set well into the fur. This, like many other of the features we'll see, is an adaptation to cold temperatures. You wouldn't want long delicate ears sticking up out of your fur if you're a northern animal, and you're active in cold winter temperatures, as is the red bat. Here, too, you can see the tragus, a process in the ear opening. It was so diaphanous as to be translucent. This bat's eyes were tiny, smaller than those of a big brown or little brown bat. But that's mostly because it was dead. As you'll see in Part II, a live red bat has very bright eyes indeed. 

One of the things which impressed me most, and which I wasn't expecting, was the thickly furred wing membrane. All along the wing bones is soft silver-buff fur, another cold adaptation.  

The wing bones, so very birdlike, until you realize that the bat's fingers extend into and are connected by the wing membrane. In birds, the fingers are all fused into one sort of paddle, including the stubby bony alula (that little thumby thing that sticks up on a chicken wing) and feathers grow out of that bone, and take the place of membrane. With bats, the hand bones extend out to the perimeter of the wing.

This post has proven to be a hogchoker, with more than 20 photos, so I'm going to give you more bat bits on Thursday. 

Which will be

Post #1,702. Gack! I could do this full-time, you know, and never run out of inspirato. The problem is I have other stuff I have to do. Don't we all.

Cock of the Rock Nest!

It's one thing to see a life bird. It's quite another to get a little glimpse into its life. Although I didn't know it when we entered this little cave, there was a cock of the rock nest pasted to the wall, phoebe-style.
It was bigger than a robin's nest, and made of mud and rootlets, perched on a very narrow ledge.
It appeared not to be in use at the moment, but it also looked as if it might have been in use for some years, layered as it was. I was beside myself.

Looking around, there was more to the story. As the female cock of the rock incubated and brooded, and as the young birds grew, they had regurgitated the seeds and pits of the myriad fruits they eat. There was a carpet of pits under the nest.
And off to the side, a small forest of hopeful seedlings, probably never to prosper in this dry, dark cave.
But what a treasure trove for an ornithologist, botanist or ecologist! Here, clearly written in seeds and plantlets, is the diet of the cock of the rock, laid out for anyone to identify and study. Here is the evidence of the bird's value as a seed disperser, here is the list of plants that the birds need to survive. Of course, I was no closer to identifying any of the seeds or plants than anyone else; they were all foreign to me. But I could have, given time and the right resources. It was a heady thought.

But there was more. High up in a crevice, I noticed a bump.
Drawing closer, I could see that the bump had a nose.
Closer yet, and it resolved into a little bat.
Oh, you precious thing. I was reminded of the captivating red bat my friend Caitlin found on our field trip into the forest behind Clermont Northeastern Middle School in southwest Ohio, way back in November.
who has graced my desktop ever since. Hello! I say it every morning.
Each one, a gift. I don't understand people's fear of bats. I think they're just about the coolest animal of all--a flying insectivore! the only mammal that does not simply glide, but truly flies.

Meanwhile, the cock of the rock posed--here is a head-on shot of that orange cookie crest. Come nibble my fringe, ladies.
and it occurred to me that this had been one of the most satisfying experiences I'd had in nature--not only to see a strange, new and beautiful bird, but to understand a little something of how it lives.
To see its nest, to see its food, its habitat, the plants that support it, and then to see the male bird, glowing like a coal in the forest. It was almost too much to take in, in a single afternoon. Now, I yearn to see the female cock of the rock. She's a strange dark maroony brown, with the same semicircular crest. I guess that will have to be another time, another place, perhaps another life.

Red Bat!

Just being in the woods with 25 people is an experience. The ways in which I normally sense things have to be recalibrated. Because 25 people make a lot of noise, listening for birdcalls or tiny scufflings in the leaves is out. But I can still look, and 25 pairs of eyes can look, too. We looked at an old hickory that had been struck by lightning, and was now healing along the blaze mark, wrapping fresh wood around a rotting inner core.

I decided to ask the students to look at the woods through the eyes of a worm-eating warbler. Worm-eating warblers (here's one of my drawings of a female tending her nest)
specialize in finding insects, spiders, egg sacs and larvae hiding in hanging dead leaf clusters. Until you look at the woods through a worm-eating warbler's eyes, you'd never dream how many hanging dead leaf clusters you could find to plunder for food. So I asked the kids to think like a bird, a bird which makes its living clinging upside down to dead leaf clusters, looking for whatever lives inside them. We went from cluster to cluster, prying them apart and seeing what was inside. And there was a spider or an egg sac in nearly every one. Calls of "I found one!" rang out through the golden woods. And then came the call from Caitlin Adams: "I found a BAT!"
Everyone froze and hurried over to Caitlin's side. She had indeed found a bat, hanging upside down right beside a leaf cluster. Well, how about that! A bat. A BAT!! And not just any bat, but a Red Bat. My Favorite Bat of All. One I have seen countless times, but only on the wing. Oh, how I have longed for a better look at a red bat. And now, thanks to Caitlin and Mrs. Newman and Clermont Northeastern Middle School which owns these beautiful woods she helped to save from the lumber mill, here was a red bat hanging right at eye level from a sugar maple leaf for all the world to see.

Lasiurus borealis is one of the tree bats, family Vespertilionidae. Red bats occur across the eastern two-thirds of North America, and they are more common than you'd think, but they don't live in colonies; they're solitary. They migrate south just like birds when it gets cold, though with their luxuriant cinnamon-colored fur, they have much greater cold tolerance than most other bats. In Ohio, we see them most often in late October and early November, as they make their way south. If you see a bat flying around alone on a cool autumn evening, or even during bright daylight in fall, it may be a red bat. They roost, often hanging by one foot, and look remarkably like a hanging dead leaf or pine cone. Females may have up to five young at a time, and she flies with them clinging to her belly, and when they're old enough to hang up she leaves them hanging while she forages, then flies back to nurse them. Imagine a female red bat hanging her babies up and then coming back to nurse them. It's a scene right out of Stellaluna. Red bats are actually pretty large bats, as bats go, with a body length of around four inches and wingspans of up to 13". When it's really cold they ball themselves up inside their furry tail membrane, looking like almost nothing at all.

Gently, I tipped the leaf so the kids could see the bat's face, and the weakened leaf petiole, about ready to let go anyway, snapped off in my hand. After a moment of panic--I have a bat in my hand! What am I going to do with him now? Unhook his feet and hang him up somewhere else?-- it occurred to me that in the 100 or so pockets of the kids surrounding this bat there might be a bread wrapper or a piece of string. Sure enough, Tierra pulled a bit of blue yarn out of her jeans pocket. Another student held the leaf while I tied the yarn around the stem and then around a twig on the little maple tree. Voila. The bat was safely hanging once again. Phewww.

It is hard to overstate the concentrated cuteness of a red bat. Hanging head down, he didn't look like much. Maybe like a hamster, with that unusual cinnamon brown, silky fur. But I insisted that even the kids who were a little shy about bats come forward and have a look at his face. And it was there, eye to eye, that the true connection between these kids and this bat was forged. It is impossible to be afraid of an animal this adorable, no matter how bad the advance press on bats might be. Along his side, just above the wing, was a stripe of creamy fur that seemed almost too lovely to be true. We all wanted so badly to stroke that satin fur, but we didn't want to scare him any more than we already had. For those who have internalized all the myths about bats and who recoil in horror at the thought of touching one, rest assured that no one but me got closer than a hand's length to the animal, and I stayed with it as long as the students were present.

You have been warned. The bat pictures in this post will increase in adorability until your face melts.

Every once in awhile he'd raise his head and look around in wonder at all the faces staring back into his.
Once, when we got a little too close, he gaped at us, a little warning, but even that was pretty cute.
All the while, I told the kids what I knew about red bats. The nice part for me was that we ignored, never deigned to mention, skipped completely over the old wives' tales about bats--that they get tangled in your hair, that they all carry rabies, that they are evil, bloodthirsty, black-hearted flying mice...none of which are true, and none of which obviously applied to this enchanting little creature. No, we leapt right to the infatuation phase in our relationship with this bat.
Everyone wanted their picture taken with the famous red bat (who looks like a chicken nugget in this picture, hanging right in front of one kid's face on the left side of the photo). I wish I could post all my pictures, and I apologize to anyone who was there but feels left out. There were permissions forms involved...it got complicated. Thank you, Sherri and the other teachers and students who raced to get written parental permission, for making publication of these photos possible. Caitlin the Bat Locator is the tall girl in pink, and Tierra's right in front of her, in white. She gave me yarn, and reminds me of hauntingly of my niece, Christy. I had to stop myself from scooping her up and hugging her.

Although cellphones aren't supposed to come out during school hours, Mr. Blake
made an exception. It's not every day you get to say hello to a red bat.
A whole bunch of photos later, it was finally time to turn back toward school. We'd no sooner gotten in the doors than Mr. Blake gathered several teachers and headed back out to show them the little vespertilionid. That was one of my favorite moments of the day. I had no sooner returned from my third field trip than I turned right around and took a fourth, impromptu group out to see it. Then Sherri Newberry took two more groups. It was that special, that irresistible. The whole school caught red bat fever that golden November day.
Bridget was so completely enchanted that she couldn't leave. I knew a girl like that once.
I don't know what she'll become when she grows up, but something rare passed between Bridget
and the bat. I would imagine that teachers never get used to seeing a life change before their eyes, and that's what keeps them working and grading papers long into the night.

Thank you to Pam Murphy, Sherri Newberry, Melody Newman and Stephen Blake for making my visit so rich and for preparing the students so well, so that they could hear what I had to say. Thank you to Nick Adams for building the blind, and to his younger sister Caitlin for finding the bat. (Coincidence? I think not). Thank you to the students for loving the bat every bit as much as I did, for being willing to look into its face, to connect with its small furry soul and imagine what it must be thinking and feeling. Thank you for reading my work and looking at my paintings and photographs, and for the nice messages you've sent me. And thank you to Clermont Northeastern Middle School for protecting the pond and woodlot, for these seemingly simple landscape features provide habitat for all creatures great and small, and by their presence afford limitless opportunities for learning and spiritual renewal to your students.

I have yet to see a parking lot or a pile of lumber that can do that.