Our New Found Love of Bats
It all started with Silas’ fascination with dams. Yes, dams. As mentioned here, last winter Silas took an earnest interest in all the old dams at Hueco. As a result, our entire family became a lot more educated on dams – their purpose(s), how they were built, their role in spinning turbines to generate electricity, the whole nine yards. He was into it so we jumped on it, seizing our own little educational moments with him while his interest was still so fresh and genuine. Then one evening at the Hueco campsite Silas saw an owl while peeing. And later that evening while propped up on his pillow in the upstairs of the van, peering out into the dark night he announced “Mama, I’m curious about those owls. Where are their nests? Where do they sleep?” And then it was off to the library to learn all about owls. Next was bees. This subject was actually brought to light by me. This spring while outside planning the location of our herb garden a swarm of bees on the move buzzed right through the courtyard over my head. I high-tailed into the house and told Silas all about it when he woke up from his nap. Again he was fascinated, so again we headed to the educational section in the library and checked out all the books about bees.
Which brings us to our latest craze: bats. Our dear friend Linda has recently returned from an exciting multi-month adventure down in South America and is now making Tucson her home. While helping her find an apartment we happened to pick up the Tucson Weekly which contained the “Summer Survival Guide” – all the Tucson happenings this summer. As we were thumbing through the kids and family section we noticed ALL KINDS of events related to bats. Most notably, the Thursday night Bat Bridge Discovery where thousands of Mexican Free-Tailed Bats take flight at sunset from under the bridges in the dry riverbeds, and docents from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum are there to answer questions and offer info. Friends had always told us about this event and we just never did it for one reason or another. Well, now we had a reason. The best reason yet: Silas. Sooooo, to the library!!!
After reading the library’s entire 7 children’s educational books on bats at least 10 times over each, discussing all the info over many a meal, making Silas his own little Mexican-Free-Tailed bat friend out of paper and a clothes pin, and deciding that bats might very well be Silas’ favorite animal ever (probably because they are Linda’s favorite, I’m sure), we were armed and ready to finally witness the Tucson bridge bats.
And witness them we did. Standing down in the wash with the bats pouring over our heads out into the desert sunset was perhaps THE most incredible wildlife viewing this family has ever seen.
We usually try to add some sort of games, arts or crafts to our education moments. This is Silas’ Mexican-Free-Tailed Bat craft project. This little guy has been “roosting” in the most interesting places around the house all week.
The bridge bats taking flight
A family in awe
posted by arr
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