Entomology and chiropterology
The highlight of my day, on days when I go to my office at Presbytery, is stepping outside for a smoke. There’s a flowering hedge between the lawn and the parking lot. It has bright yellow, five-petal flowers ¾” to an inch across.
And it’s filled with bumblebees. Dozens of bumblebees at any given time, having serious fun doing their bumblebee thing. I love watching them. They alight and waste no time before plunging their little bumblebee faces straight into the middle of the flower and having a good wallow.
Meanwhile, they spin their back end around so that their front end gets all around the middle. They really seem happy and were completely undisturbed by the lady who trimmed the hedge earlier in the week.
A couple of weeks ago they were joined by little coppery butterflies, but it looks like their season has ended. Occassionally a honeybee comes by, but it’s the bumblebees that really make it.
Back in the city, here at home, it’s just yellow jackets and blowflies. They fly in, wander around and fly out. Unless I’m cooking. I’ve learned to shut the kitchen door when I do that. Although, times that I forget, they’re remarkably obedient when I ask them to leave.
I had hoped they would help me track down the source of a rotten meat odor in the kitchen. It’s noticable only when the door is closed, and it’s diffuse enough that I can’t pin down the source.
I’ve taken out the trash, cleaned the pail and the cupboard under the sink. I’ve scrubbed every surface, even between the cupboard and the stove, to no avail. I can only speculate that it must be coming from the disposer. Probably a bit of grizzle it’s having trouble chewing up.
Still, the blowflies and yellow jackets, who are ordinarily quite good at zeroing-in on rotting carrion, can’t seem to locate the source either. They fly around and around in circles before giving up and flying out the door.
Chiroptera
Our hot, sticky summer has actually been quite dry, with regard to rainfall. This has kept the insect population down considerably. Which has put pressure on the little brown bats that live somewhere in the neighborhood.
Last week, one night just before midnight, a presumably desperately hungry bat flew in the kitchen door. It completed a couple of orbits of the living room at an altitude of six or seven feet, decided there was little food and much danger here (what the the ceiling fan spinning crazily) and it flew back out.
It was a little bit of a thing, maybe a six-inch wingspan. First time I’d seen a real, live bat close up in the light. I’ve seen them outside in the dark all my life of course, but all I’ve been able to really see is a shadow flying in the dark. After I got over the initial shock, I rather enjoyed watching it and wished it had stayed a few seconds longer.
Last night a bat or bats kept flying up and down the alley, casting shadows on the bedroom walls. A nearly full moon and the security lights at the church across the alley made shadow casting over all the walls, ceiling and floor possible. Quite a show.
I rolled over to see if I could watch them from the window, just as one flew up to the window and snatched away the spider that had built a web outside it earlier in the evening.
Well, with my glasses off, I’m assuming it was bat. Could have been a McDonalds wrapper for all I know. Although McDonalds wrappers aren’t noted for controlled flight and snatching spiders while on the wing.
Anyway, a wing, probably, just kissed the window enough to make a noise, so I knew it wasn’t a shadow, and when I got up to look, the spider and web were gone. Just then, there was a shadow and tick from the bathroom window.
And this morning I see the living room windows are also free of spiders. Bats that do windows. How nice.
