Pennsylvania Game News - August 2022 - 37

C
OME SUMMER, and homework free,
we were let loose after dinner to play
for several more hours, sometimes well into
the night. Adults sat on gliders or swings
on the big front porches, enjoying the cool
evening breeze that drifted down the wooded
hill and into the neighborhood. They listened
to baseball games on transistor radios while
kids caught fireflies, ate popsicles, and raced
through the yards.
One evening, while sitting near the streetlight
trading baseball cards with friends, a
shadow passed over us, then another. It was
a pair of bats, dipping and weaving as they
feasted on the legions of moths and other
insects attracted to the light. More entertaining
than swapping cards, we oohed and
aahed at their aerial artistry.
We had seen bats many times before, but
never paid close attention to their spectacular
acrobatics. Mostly, they were little more than
flying motes, zipping through the light and
into the shadows. Close up, they captured the
imagination. One tilted wildly, turning on a
dime to snag an insect into its cupped wing,
as a shortstop would a line drive with his
glove. Marveling at their agility, we wanted
to know more.
A trip to the library downtown provided
little, as most of the books were generalized
mammal titles, with bats getting only
cursory mention. The librarian, who knew I
liked illustrated books, steered me in another
direction.
" We don't have any books strictly about
bats, but we just received a book on cats that
I think you might like. " Then she whispered,
" No one really likes bats anyway. "
Grudgingly, I took the cat book home.
Leafing through it later, I became transfixed,
having never seen another book like it. Every
page was beautifully illustrated with notated
drawings that revealed the secret lives of the
ordinary house cat, its amazing anatomy,
how it retained the feral traits of its wild
ancestors. I never looked at cats the same
way again, and felt compelled even then,
at 9 years of age, to do the same with other
animals, starting with bats.
My friends and I decided bats to be the
perfect subject for starting a club. Although
familiar, they were mysterious and little
understood. Shrouded in myth and superstition,
bats had the magnetism that might
attract members.
Back then, clubs and hobbies abounded.
Advertisers found that enticing kids to join
a club was a good way to promote and sell
products, to get them to watch television
shows, or eat certain foods. Many kids,
however, often created their own, informal
neighborhood clubs. There were clubs for
model-car building, roller skating, BB gun
shooting, sports card collecting, and others.
Our club would be different, though, as we
were starting from scratch. We didn't know
much about bats, but were determined to
learn.
We agreed our club would have nothing
to do with Batman or vampires or anything
aligned with the horror films and comics so
popular back then. We called our group the
Boyer Street Bat Club, or BSBC. Our mission
was to learn their natural history while
dispelling those old myths surrounding bats
in general.
The first thing we needed was an identity,
and being the artist of the group, I designed
AUGUST 2022
37
Pennsylvania Game News - August 2022

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