DEXTER AND THE BIG SLEEP

by Susan McElroy

About bats. Long before I spent a week under the spell of a little brown bat Mirella had proudly carried in, I read about bats and looked bug-eyed at pictures of them.  The phrase I most uttered while under the enchantment of bats was “W…wow!”

Long after “Bat Masterson” had crept out of my life (flying off into the upper reaches of my Oregon barn), I would giggle uncontrollably just to think of him. Little brown bats are exactly that—little. My torn-wing charge needed to be fed with a surgical irrigating syringe. A bigger dropper than that and I’d have quickly drowned him. The only way I could guide the syringe to the pin-prick hole that he claimed for a mouth was to use a magnifying glass.

Oddly enough, even though I needed my bi-focals to see his eyes and his toes, I could see his fangs unaided by any kind of magnification. It’s not that they were that big—of course not—it’s that they were that white. Gleaming actually, like tiny splinters of moonlight.

The only bat to cross my path since B. Masterson was the little cold dead one I found on my doormat, who seemed to have been the harbinger of several years of medical horror.

So when Roberta, WildCare’s Bat Team Leader, sent out an email looking for folks who were interested in helping care for the incoming trickle of winter bats to the center, I hit reply faster than I believed my fingers could still move.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great delight bordering on near-breathlessness that I introduce you to Dexter—I got to name him!—my charge for the winter. Forgive the less than impressive photo I’ve posted here. In photos, bats mostly look like half-melted Snickers Bars, stuck on a variety of surfaces (“Here is a photo of a Snickers Bar on a fence rail. Here is a photo of a baby Snickers Bar stuck to its mother. Here is a Snickers Bar melted to a cave wall…”)

Roberta teamed us up in volunteer pairs—one pair per bat—and Laura and I were called in last week to train for Team Dexter. Dexter is a full-grown big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), a common species here in Indiana.

Read more...