“The very places Indiana bats trusted to preserve them betrayed them. Cool, dark, and humid, cave air not only holds bats in metabolic equipoise, it also invigorates a fungus new to North America. Brought from Europe on spelunkers’ gear, spores of the fungus multiplied rampantly in caves of northeastern states, then spread farther and faster on the bodies of bats. The tightly packed group-body of Indiana bats trusted to heat them and hold them through the winter contaminated them….
Some remnant populations, rather than waking once every thirteen nights of their hibernation, are rousing each night—briefly, without burning much fat. Warming together more often, the colony keeps the cold-loving plague at bay. Though it seemed to destroy them, the bats have found deep within the group-body a force that answers death with resurrection.”
–Gayle Boss, Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing (Paraclete Press, 2020), p. 40-41
Thank you for this series of quotes related to the environment.
Several times this past year, we have been surprised by a good sized bat hanging from a hairline crack on our living room wall though our windows and doors were shut. At the same time we were reading articles and hearing reports about the fungal disease that has been killing bats by the droves; bats that fill a vital ecological niche. From these reports, we also learned that the infected bats were disoriented and flying about at places and times when they would normally be sleeping. Due to concern about disease transmission, I would carefully remove the bat with a net and take it to a nearby grove of trees. It would flop on the ground appearing to be dead. When I would check the next day it was gone. My hope and prayer was that s/he was re-oriented and lived to fine another day…..more-so, that there would healing and restoration for its species as for life-forms in freefall throughout the Earth and finally…for our species. That we would stop waffling around about what needs to be done!