Engaging with bats

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I just read a post by @celticeagle which made me think of this post. I have always liked bats. Since I was a child until I went to a noisy concert aged 36 I could always hear them. I think perhaps that made me more engaged with them because I knew when they were around and would look for them. Once when I was young a bat flew into my parents’ bedroom and couldn’t find its way out; my Mum caught it in a towel and came and woke me up to show me before letting it go. The first home I owned was a tiny canal boat, and each evening I would walk home across a meadow and I could hear the bats literally sounding me out, they would fly around above me echo-locating (and probably also eating the insects that were attracted to me). I could hear their calls and I would look up and see them swooping around up there. A few years ago we all went to a special bat evening where we were given bat-detectors to try and listen to and identify different species. There was also a talk about bats and we even met a few at close quarters (bats that had been injured and treated but were too ‘disabled’ to return to life in the wild). I was a little surprised to find they are nothing like mice in spite of their popular image but in fact are more closely related to primates. Now I can no longer hear them I feel a real sense of loss. Neither of my parents could ever hear them, nor can my partner or my children, so they can’t really understand why I feel the loss but to me it feels like the beginning of the end, and summer evenings are never the same. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2016.