At some point in my adult life, I began to really dig bats. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I realized that bats were flying all around me at night. I had never noticed them. Ever since, I get a little thrill every time I see a bat flying. It’s not just that I presume they are eating mosquitoes. Or that you likely won’t see them unless you make an effort. It’s something about how hard they need to be working to remain in flight. They seem so precarious in the air. There is something delightfully creepy about their whole existence.
So tonight, coming back from a dogwalk at dusk, I decided to lie down in the backyard and do some batwatching. They did not disappoint. In a fifteen minute span, I think I saw as many bats fly across my view as I’ve seen in my entire life. My heart began to race from the excitement. I started to feel something like fearful, but it was a yummy kind of fear, as if from a classic horror film.
This was my first night of dedicated batwatching, but I intend to do it again tomorrow night.
Nice post. Although I only saw 1 bat over 3 nights of Paul Lake viewing, I have no doubt the population there is strong. Maybe you would feel differently about them however if you found one at the pulpit of your church camp one Sunday morning, flipping and flopping around and needing to be removed and most likely killed. I have no problem with bats really, just think you need to exercise some caution when communicating with these wicked creatures.
Thought I was running out of characters in this reply window like wtf is my comment being restricted but it’s going fine now. This UI is sick! 8j
Am I remembering it wrong, or did you see that one bat seconds after I said “you gotta look for the bats to see them”… or something like that?
I started paying attention to bats around the time I was working renovating a run-down old apartment building in the mid-nineties. There were a lot of bats living in the upper floors. I remember some of the workers playing “batminton” with a bat they had caught. I felt something like the revulsion you described, but was mostly appalled at how they were treated. Just because they were “gross”. It was around then that a co-worker pointed out to me, “when you see a bird fly by a streetlamp at night… that’s no bird.”
I will pass on your positive feedback regarding the UI to Abject’s team of engineers! They will appreciate it, 2014 has been a tough year for them. They will likely never recover.
Were you bit? I’m beginning to think you might get seen by someone. Bela Lugosi is not dead, he can’t die!