A Little Bit Batty

It’s mid-June. The sun has just dropped down behind the rolling hills to the west of my building. The sky, in its wake, is deepening into shades of lemon and cantaloupe. A cool breeze has come up, and the fog is sending its first tentacles over the hilltops. 

I dig a pair of shoes out from under the dining room table and strap them on. Tanner watches me with an intensity he normally reserves for squirrels. When I stand, he leaps up and dashes into the bedroom, doubling back to the doorway to make sure I’m still behind him. He circles around me and sits when I pick up his leash. He’s doing his best to be calm, but when I turn to grab my keys off the shelf he can’t resist a quick, excited nibble at his already well-frayed leash.

Tanner stands watch over the walkway as I lock the door. Then there’s the elevator and a stroll through the courtyard to get the business end of the walk out of the way. Finally I push the front gate open and we cross the street to the park.

The sky is darkening to a deep, iridescent indigo. Streetlights flick on. We come to a long, open patch of grass that separates the ball diamond from the bocce courts. Tanner’s head is down. With his hunting-dog nose, he’s minutely studying and cataloging the scents that have accumulated in the grass, tree trunks, and plants since our walk first thing this morning. 

I, however, am looking up. It’s almost time for the bats to come out.

We reach the light pole at the south end of the park. I see a jagged fluttering at the edge of my vision, then another. A bat cruises by, a few yards over my head. As quickly as the bat appears, it reverses direction and is gone. Within seconds it - or one of its companions - is back. I move away from the light and keep watching.

It’s difficult to tell exactly how many there are, since they are well camouflaged by the darkness and their movements are quick and jerky. After a few minutes I determine that there are at least six individual bats over the immediate area. They do an intricately choreographed dance across the park, threading in and out of each other’s paths, ascending steeply, executing sudden u-turns and death-defying dips and dives. 

I’ve been fascinated by these hairy, insect-eating neighbors of mine for weeks. Yesterday evening, as usual, I timed the end of our walk to coincide with prime bat-watching time. The lights at the ball diamond were on and insects were swarming around them. I figured it would be a good night for bats. Yet in the ten or fifteen minutes we spent milling about, I only saw one bat.

During June and early July I had observed that the average window of time the bats spent in this section of the park nightly was about forty minutes, after making their first appearance around dusk. In the past couple weeks I’ve noticed their numbers decreasing, but last night's solitary bat was an all-time low. 

Bats are nocturnal. Like birds, they must eat at least half of their body weight in food daily to maintain the energy they need to survive. I wondered: Is there a route they follow each night, with regularly scheduled appearances to mine each spot for insects before moving on? What kind range do they cover when hunting - blocks, acres, miles? What would cause them to pass over a place they frequented previously? And finally, where do they sleep during the day? 

It was time to find out. I gave Tanner his post-walk treats and immersed myself in the world of bats. 

I discovered a wealth of information that answered my biggest questions. If you'd like to explore for yourself, see the links below for bat-resources and further bat-info:

 - Bats date back at least 35 million years, possibly longer+. Of the 47 species of bats common to the United States, about 24 are local to California•. Thirteen species are native to Marin County*, where I currently reside. One of the most common is the Myotis lucifugus, or little brown bat. 

Myotis lucifugus photo courtesy of http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/MMD/AML/Bat-LittleBrown.html 

- Bats are beneficial to the ecosystem, controlling insect populations (one little brown bat can eat up to 1000 mosquitos in a single hour** ) and significantly reducing the types of insect pests that plague crops. Many species play vital roles in pollinating plants, flowers and trees. They catch insects with their mouths, or use their tails to trap insects and direct them mouthward. 

- Despite the saying 'blind as a bat', they are sighted animals. Small bats like the little brown bat use echolocation to hunt prey, while their vision helps them navigate large obstacles++.

- Bats are known to travel several miles per day between roosting and feeding sites, they are likeliest to stay relatively close to their roosts. They're most active a few hours after dusk and a couple hours before dawn, sometimes heading back to the roost for a nap in between. They tend to return to areas where they have found food before. Bats are partial to beetles, which are large, easy prey ∆ (this may account for the large numbers of bats I saw earlier this summer when the June bug -June beetle- population was booming).

June bug photo courtesy of http://digitaldreammachine.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html

- It's commonly known that bats reside in caves, and under that one bridge in Austin, Texas (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10852 - a 'World's Largest'!). Smaller species can fit into any opening greater than about half an inch, so any dark, warm sheltered place, including under rocks and inside wood piles, can be a roost. 

- While it’s easy to think of them as birds, bats are mammals. A female little brown bat gives birth to one pup per year, and it clings to her for a few weeks while nursing. After about a month, the pup can fly on its own and is self-supporting ∆. 

   

It’s about time for this evening’s walk. My soundtrack tonight, in honor of the bats, will be the Batman Begins score. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard named each track after a different species of bat!

Links:

+Natural History Museum of the UK, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/mammals/bats/session1/index.html, and ++http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/mammals/bats/session3/index.html

•San Francisco Bay Area National Parks, http://www.sfnps.org/bats

*WildCare eNews Letter, October 2008: http://wc.convio.net/eNews/October_2008.html

**Defenders of Wildlife, Bats Fact Sheet: http://www.defenders.org/bats/basic-facts

∆ University of Michigan Animal Diversity website: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Myotis_lucifugus.html

Ped Life

Back in the early 90s I was without a car for a couple of years, by choice. I moved to Chicago after college, my 1981 Buick Skylark stuffed full of the few belongings I had. After several years of break-ins, hustling for parking spaces on crowded neighborhood streets, trying to stay one step ahead of the tow trucks, and paying for parking tickets (plus the exorbitant fees to the auto pound when the tow trucks got me), I started seriously reconsidering my need for a car.

I lived a few blocks from the el. I worked a few blocks from the el. I only drove to work a couple days a week anyway. It might be worth a shot, I reasoned. 

Then the Skylark quit working as well as it had been. I don’t remember what was wrong with it, only that it was driveable - but barely. I found a place on a non-permit-parking neighborhood street near the shop I owned, and left the car there for a couple of months. I would walk by from time to time, start it up, drive it around the block, move it to other parking spaces if any were available on the same street. But mostly I left it alone. 

Finally I was ready to make the break. I told my Dad I wanted to sell the car. I drove downstate to the town where he and my mom lived, and he sold it for me. 

I figured I'd be fine. 

And I was. Truth be told, I was glad to be relieved of the burden. 

Chicago is an extremely walkable city. Getting around was easy. I could take Amtrak downstate to visit my parents and my brother. When I absolutely needed wheels, there was a car rental office less than a mile from my shop. For everything else there was the Chicago Transit Authority, and my feet.

I ended the carless streak by purchasing a used ‘89 Chevy Blazer. The thing was a money pit. I replaced every major component on it at least once in the three or four years I had it. Plenty of times I ended up on foot or el or bus, simply because driving was more hassle than it was worth.

After I bought the Jeep I moved away from Chicago, living in a series of smaller cities and towns in Northern Arizona. Walkable, hikable places. The Jeep wasn’t always necessary, but with it I could get to the remote places and back-country trails I loved.

In 2004 I moved back to Chicago. I lucked into an apartment in Old Town that came with a garage space - no more street parking! My boyfriend at the time parked his truck there; I kept the Jeep in the garage at my best friend’s house. With the apartment so centrally located and the vehicles so conveniently garaged, it was hard to justify driving anywhere that required us to spend effort finding and/or paying for parking. We mostly walked, took the el - the Brown Line stop was half a block from our place - and rode our bikes.

I lived a couple other places after that stint in Chicago: Northern California, Central Illinois. Places where a good balance of walking and driving were possible. 

Then I spent two years in sprawling Phoenix. Phoenix is a car culture city, partially out of necessity: there are times of the year when it's just plain dangerous to be out in the baking sun and scorching heat for too long. Few places in the metro area are set up, or even intended to be, pedestrian friendly. After about six months, the two- to three-hour daily round trip commutes to work took all the joy out of driving for me. Acre after acre after acre of asphalt and concrete took most of the joy of walking out of me, too. And the crazily erratic driving I encountered in my daily commute with the Phoenicians and attendant snowbirds had me extremely leery of biking anywhere.

When the opportunity arose for my current job and subsequent return to Northern California, I was ready to live in a town again, a place that was built on a more human scale. I wanted - planned - to rely less on my Jeep. It was 14, it had 210,000+ miles on it, it deserved a break. I planned to walk and bike more, in areas where doing so wouldn’t make me feel like I had a giant red ‘hit me’ sign taped to my back.

I sought out the building where I live because of its proximity to simply everything (it has a walkscore.com rating of 98). My daily work commute on foot takes all of twenty minutes round trip, less if I take the shortcut. Yet until I no longer had the Jeep I still relied on it nearly every day, even for the minor trips I could have easily done on foot or by bike. Yes, I was reacquainting myself with old favorite haunts: the Marin Headlands. Stinson Beach. Mt Tam. Bolinas. Pt Reyes. Perhaps I was also still in Phoenix mode; drive-everywhere mode. 

Now, without the Jeep, my radius of travel is considerably smaller than it’s been in a long time. It requires me to take advantage of transportation options I neglected when I could just turn the key in the ignition and go. Sometimes it’s frustrating. Being car-free requires patience and planning, two things I’ve had in short supply the last few years. It also requires a kind of creative thinking I haven’t used in a while. Most purchases, for instance, are limited to what I can carry and/or fit in my backpack (if I’m on the bike). 

Creativity, extra planning, patience…making use of these parts of my brain in a new way have been soothing. I feel more relaxed. Less stressed. It could be the extra exercise working its magic; either way, I’m going to stick with it for a while.