Pennsylvania Game News - August 2023 - 63

humans carrying fungal spores on shoes,
clothing and gear used in recreational
spelunking.
The ecological impact of White-Nose
Syndrome, beyond the decimation of bats
themselves, is unknown but potentially
immense. Healthy bat populations were
our most important predators of mosquitoes
and other nocturnal flying insects.
Researchers suspect that a foraging bat
can eat a thousand mosquitoes per hour.
If humans feel compelled to apply
more insect pesticides to compensate for
bat absence, environmental degradation
may cascade in response.
The Game Commission worked
swiftly to minimize White-Nose spread
to, and from, state game land tracts I'm
familiar with. Commission biologists and
land managers erected barriers that block
human entry, but allow bats to enter and
leave caves and shafts. These obstructions
prevent disturbance of hibernating bats
and reduce the further spread of fungus
on clothing and boots.
I still see bats around my home on
summer evenings. They appear out of the
woods as the brighter stars kindle their
gleam at the verge of night, one bat alone
but more often as pairs or in threes. They
wheel and circle at treetop height, seeming
to fly more slowly than their rapidly
beating wings should propel them, executing
abrupt veers to the side or downward,
thinning the legions of droning gnats that
attend our sunsets outdoors.
These representatives of the once vast
throngs are, I think, either red bats or big
brown bats. I can't see much detail, of
course, but my Guide to the Mammals
of Pennsylvania states that red bats don't
hibernate. They're migrators, much like
many birds, and so are never exposed to
the fungus that lurks in caves.
Big brown bats do hibernate, but
AUGUST 2023
avoid dense
clusters, seeking
isolated
sleeping sites
which, to some
degree, may
render them
less susceptible
to infection than
the devastated
little brown.
Here at our
home, we are
blessed
with
the frequent presence
of our young
granddaughter, who
showed an early
interest in flowers,
leaves, fish, birds and any aspect of
nature within hearing or view.
As she's grown, I have felt an uncontainable
impulse to carry her to any good
vantage point or, more recently, to call
her near at every sighting of bats above
the garden.
Watching her more intently than the
bats themselves, I've noted her head lift
and pivot as her eyes tracked the flight of
a creature our culture encourages her to
fear and loathe, but which, I sense, she
will know as natural and superb.
It is not realistic to expect she will
witness flights of bats in numbers or
frequency I knew in my own youth. She
has, though, seen bats as they remain now,
which I consider, in some small way, a
gift from myself. And I've read there's
a chance some bat species, if helped
however we can, will gradually build
resistance to the fungal scourge within
her years.
She doesn't yet understand enough to
hope for that, but its very uncertainty is a
trespass against her.
63
Pennsylvania Game News - August 2023

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