All Halloweeny

There are those days when staying home and trying to write isn't working. The house has been far too quiet lately. Liam's a senior in high school. 'Nuff said. 

  I didn't realize how much it meant to have another warm living body in the house, whether it was a person or just a sweetly weary dog, his face all silver, his eyes clouded. Now he's gone, too, and sometimes I just have to put some miles on and head down Dean's Fork, because there's nowhere else to put this feeling but in the measured rhythm of my boot steps. I pick my way down the uneven slopes until I hit the packed dirt of the road and can settle into a steadier gait. His ghost trots along with me, I expect, but I've only heard him snort once, and I've never yet seen him. It's taking him awhile to come through the veil.

There are others out there watching, and they're a comfort; they'll pass for company.

She lifts a strong slender leg and stamps, telling me I've been seen. Her next move--to whirl in a flash of white and rise on those slender legs, and kerthump away. Aw c'mon. What's so scary about a woman with a camera?

I'm delighted to find this field sparrow perched in perfect camouflage against stringy bark. As if it knows it. Well, it does. 

I imitate its thin whistle, sweet as maple syrup, and the sparrow perches up high for a better look at me.
Is there any blue like that of a late October sky? The perfect compliment to the field sparrow's soft, cinnamon-dusted feathers.

I follow the squidgy grinding sound of a gray squirrel cutting a black walnut, the work of an hour or more. I try to imagine opening a black walnut with my teeth and cannot. I can't even open them with a dang hammer.
Those are some razor sharp teeth there, Mr. Squirrel. I'm making him nervous by watching him, but he's not about to drop this partially-opened walnut. He can almost taste the purply sweetness of that precious kernel, the one that's never going to become a tree.

There's Alice. I just found out her name. She's an Allis Chalmers, and she still runs, I'm told. I've always called her the Right Reverend Allis Chalmers, and I know she doesn't care what anybody calls her. The phoebes nest up under the ceiling of her cab every year, and I love to see them sitting out on on ironweed in the meadow, bobbing their tails, like nobody would have figured out they'd hidden a nest up in Alice's cab. 

I keep walking until I get to the black barn, the green meadow, with the dead stalks of ironweed still standing; the warm brown Limousins grazing between the bitter plants. Since the gristmill fell down, the barn and this field-- Main Grounds for the Ironweed Festival-- is my endpoint, my destination. I need something to walk to. I have peeked through its boards, but have never been inside it, because it's always been padlocked. But today I'm amazed to see a board has rotted and fallen off, and the portal is suddenly open to me. Of course, I go in. This is where it gets all Halloweeny.

There is nothing like the slatted light inside an old barn, and nothing like the way the iPhone captures it. Oh, it gives me shivers. 

I always see watercolors in the limited palette, the lines and shapes of a barn interior.

The absolute first thing I see is guano. Oh. My. God. So much guano.

It's a pile of bat guano, that of big brown bats beyond doubt, with stripes of light raking across it, like a big claw trying to gather it in.

I am so flabbergasted that I'm cussing and babbling to myself. I'm briefly glad Chet isn't here to walk through it, maybe taste it as dogs will. His spirit is surely snuffling around here. He always wanted to go in this barn, would ask me to open the door, but I couldn't help him. 

Now Rot and Time, those gracious hosts, have let us in.

This must be a maternity roost, active in summer, and empty now. The barn is far too cold and drafty a place for any big brown bat to winter. I squint up into the rafters, knowing I'll find no bats. I look for the bodies of baby bats to confirm my guess that big browns breed here, but find none. There are scavengers aplenty to take care of any that fall. 

I pace off the sides of the heap to get some measure of it. It's seven feet long by five wide. I think it's at least a foot deep. That's a lot of bats, pooping for a very long time. 

I'm filled with joy that there is a place so near me where big brown bats may raise their young in peace, without someone freaking out and calling an exterminator to get rid of them. It's hard to be a bat in the world of people. There is a house on the same road where they'd been breeding, but they'll find it closed to them come spring. I can't blame the homeowners, but it made me sad just the same. It's what bats meet, everywhere they go. Exclusion. I'm glad to know there is this fallback. 

I'm just so glad to find a huge pile of bat frass. Better than roses, better than dinner out.

 I'm the ultimate low-maintenance woman. I'm the maintenance.

Processed flying insects, that's what this is, extruded in pellet form. This massive pile tells you something about the biomass of insects out there, and the tremendous potential of a bat colony to reduce it to finely-crunched fertilizer, to turn it into warm milk for wee warm short-furred pups. What a beautiful thought.

Batfrass duly admired and thought about, I turned to other sights.

Well. About 20 canisters of propellant explosives for cannons. Wednesday Thursday Friday. Holy crap. Wut? They seem pretty innocuous, lying on their sides, but I can't divine why anyone would have this, or store it here. I hope they're empty, but don't want to nudge them to see. It's a weird world. And about time to get out of this barn. But there's still so much to see.

On the canisters on an old seed or maybe fertilizer spreader, there's Rech Farm Equipment, from back in the days when Marietta, Ohio, didn't need to tell you the first two digits of a phone number. Everybody knew they were 3-7.

I wonder who I'd get if I dialed 373-9339 right now? A creaky, ghostly voice, answering "Rech 'Quipment, may I help you?" OoooOoooo.

 Ghostly things. There are always dead things in old barns. It doesn't take me long to find one.
A late squirrel rests in peace. I can see that nothing killed it; from its position and the intact bones, it came in here to die many years ago. I wonder why. Maybe it got into rat poison. I could see that happening, in a barn where unexpected explosives are stored.
The hair has long since gone with the flesh, melted into goo and decayed.

Despite its naked tail, I know it's a squirrel and not a rat because of its enormous tree-climbing claws. 

After the monochrome palette inside the barn, the autumn fire almost burns my eyes as I emerge back into Oz.

Smilax hearts, hanging suspended.

And there are ghosts on the walk home, too. I stop a long way away to watch mourning doves spiraling, winnowing down to feed on beechnuts in the road. I know what they're eating, because I've found and eaten them here this time of year, too, and I'll see them in the road when I walk up to investigate. Beechnuts are divine, sweet, triangular things, surprisingly nutty and juicy. I'm looking at mourning doves, but all my mind's eye can see is passenger pigeons, and I think of this dirt road and the entire forest floor moving with a great herd of slate blue and rose birds, twice the size of these, moving like a living carpet, vacuuming up the nuts of great beeches three times the size of the ones now growing here. I think of the roar of their wings should I move and startle them, the furious clatter of so many souls rising. 

It's been a cold day. It's after four, and the chicory never opened, never wilted; its face never went pale. That kind of chicory persistence only happens when it's cold, in October.

And this is October--deep, deep cold shadow and brilliant blue sky, blazing leaves at long last. October, in turn, makes me sweat, then makes me want to jump up high enough to catch that hilltop light and be warm again. Tonight as I write, it's raining, the kind of cold, steady rain that makes the leaves give up and fall off the trees. Oh please don't go. We'll eat you up, we love you so.

It's impossible to take a photo of October woods that shows the depth and the glow-from-within, but I try, again and again. 

I absolutely love the screaming neon chartreuse that catalpas take on in October. You can pick it out to the right of the cabin, catching the last sun. I'd never realized that was a catalpa until now. Each tree has its color, its week of utter individuality, when you can pick it out from the rest. And that happens in October, too.

Now I try to catch the last puddles of light, soaking up the color as it drains from the landscape. 

Time was when there would have been an inkblot crossing those puddles. It wasn't so long ago, but in my heart it feels like forever. 

I can hear you yelling, "SO GET A DOG, SADSACK!!" Unfortunately, another dog is not in the cards right now. My far-flung speaking engagements are only increasing; Liam's very busy in his senior year and rarely home, and when he heads to college in just a few months, I'll have no reliable dog-care backup at all. It's different out here in the sticks, 18 miles from town. You can't just call a next-door neighbor and ask them to stop in, because they aren't around, either. Liam and I managed as Chet got older and needed more care, but making sure someone was there for him a couple of times a day was an everyday struggle, one I know better than to invite right now. There's a peace in not having to worry about one's dog, after almost 13 years of worrying about one's dog. It's an aching peace, but peace nonetheless. No wonder I try so hard to make friends with wild things, who don't need to be fed or let out. They're already out.

I was too warm at the beginning of the walk, so stripped down to a T-shirt and rolled my jackets up in the weeds where I could find them again. I'm glad to get back to them and put them on now. In only two hours it's gone from sunny to shivering. Oh, October, you're a moody month.

I'm so glad to get my clothes back I stop to take a rare selfie. Not my favorite subject, but I want to show my beautiful Toronto Blue Jays Underarmor fleece that Hodge sent to me. I love keeping Jemima close to my heart, love flashing her colors. I love having such a creative and thoughtful friend.  Now that it's gotten cold, I can't take it off. I have to wash it today, though, because it smells of beef from the stew I made last night. Phew! 

 I don't notice until I upload the photo to my laptop that I've got bat poop in my  hair. Par for the Zick course. Truth in advertising. There she is, folks, batsh-t in her hair, don't know, don't care, ain't skeert. As my kids love to say, SPOOPY!!

I stop to look back down the road. Yep, beautiful, and still empty.

And up ahead, a tunnel of beauty. I head home, trying to beat the shadows, trying to stay in the light.

And the deer scatter before me.

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.