In Search of Bats: Part II

It's hard to believe, but it has been a MONTH of bridge surveys. I don't know when a month has ever gone by faster.

After a month, the hardest thing about these surveys aren't the day-to-day mechanics of fieldwork, but figuring out what it means, and what sort of questions I should be investigating. I am more efficient in my surveys; I have a system, and I know what I'm looking for. I have volunteer assistants who both help me complete the surveys and keep me from going entirely crazy on my own.

My previous assistants weren't particularly good with pens.

So, what do bridge surveys really look like on the ground, and without romantic notions?

  

 Bridges come in two varieties: too big to survey, or too small. They are hundreds of feet in the air, or six inches from the surface of a gushing stream. They all look about the same from the little colored square on the GPS, so you never really know what to expect until you drive up (or sometimes, hike up) on it. They are also everywhere. You do not even realize how many bridges you drive over in a day, and probably don't care, but I have learned to care.

 I can tell when I'm driving over a bridge because I get this terrible feeling, a disturbance in the force, telling me I just missed a bridge and I've got to fight my way back to it. I am supposed to survey every bridge I encounter (let me say again, EVERY BRIDGE). Any bridge that I miss could potentially be the one to house a whole colony of bats, and I can't bear to skip even the meanest of bridges.

Start swimmin!

Once under the bridge, I have to check every crevice that could possibly house a bat. Some bridges are easy--a blank slab on the bottom, nothing more--but others have a million tiny hiding places. From the few bats I've encountered so far, I have learned the number one rule of bridge searching, Do Not Make Assumptions. Just because the research says a bat won't be in a 1-inch deep crevice 3 feet off the ground, doesn't mean you won't find one there (apparently).

Don't Make Assumptions means that I need to crawl under the nastiest, cobwebbiest bridges you can find, and stick my face directly into spiders that shouldn't exist outside a horror movie.

I've gotten soaking wet, spit cobwebs out by the dozens, rolled around in poop, fallen off precariously piled rocks, and nearly toppled into torrents of water. My volunteers have similar stories. Anyone who says this is not proper field work should go crawl in an irrigation ditch sometime and then decide. However, the bats I have found melted my heart and made me love them all over again, and I'd survey a thousand bridges for the chance to get up close with them as I have (there are adorable pictures, guys).

My workplace is also beautiful. I am unimaginably lucky to be doing this sort of work in the gorgeous Western Montana, a place that I have been taking for granted. I can camp out by beautiful mountain streams with my volunteer partner, wake up and catch the sun rising over our first bridge. I am content out in the woods, taking an evening run or reading around the fire once the work is all done. The field season is flying by, and while it can be occasionally tempting to wish it was over and all the hard decisions were already made, I try to remember to enjoy it too.

Days like these do not come around often. I have the freedom, and the company of a small but good crew, to make the most of it.

Til next time

-Batwoman

School what?

It probably seems as if I don't do a whole lot of schoolwork what with all this adventuring going on, so I'd like to state for the record that that isn't the case. To all appearances I goofed off a lot this past weekend, but in reality was hard at work.

Photographing plants is exhausting. (Viola nuttalli)

It might appear from my numerous photographs that I was just on a fun jaunt looking at pretty flowers, when in reality. . . okay, it was a fun jaunt with flowers, but it was also homework!

Lupinus!

This semester I am taking Rocky Mountain Flora, my first real wildlife class. It is an encouraging sign of things to come that while it is challenging, I also enjoy it a lot. Surprising considering I never gave much notice to plants before, but now I'm totally nerding out on them.

The plant world might seem staid and boring--after all, they don't run around hooking each other with giant horns like some game animals are wont to do. They are easily trampled underfoot without uttering a squeak of discomfort or protest.

And yet, silently, plants are at war with one another. War, incest, sometimes even SELF-incest (that's a new one. . .), murder, and genocide ensues wherever there are plants.

In short, plants are pretty badass.

If you don't immediately believe me, remember that there are such plants as Venus Flytraps out there in the world that snap up and digest prey with their juices. And those "pretty" petals on that lupine up there are really a siren song designed to call insects away from other plants and toward itself instead. Don't fool yourself--every plant you see is risking its life to stake out the best possible territory to survive and pass on offspring. A meadow of flowers is more like a battleground, and your prancing through it aimlessly is altering the outcome of those battles. (So, watch your step.)

MURDER DAISIES!

Sometimes--by which I mean a lot of times--seeking a career in wildlife biology is a bit discouraging. It is a lot of hard work for very little payoff. But sometimes, it is also awesome, and the only place I can imagine myself being. It is a career I pursue, definitely not for the money, but purely because of my own personal motivation and love of all things wild (animal or not).

There is something to be said for that.

Cakes and Campouts

Operation dormcake went off. I won't say smoothly. But it did go off. On the other hand, I went to a campout party last night that was ridiculously awesome and hilarious. I hope it becomes a tradition with my friends and me.

     I spent all day agonizing over my attempt to make two cakes, completely fumbled with one cake and ended up with only one to show for it. And it did NOT turn out the way it was supposed to, but it ended up like this.
<-----------


Yes, it's sitting on a pine-needle encrusted picnic table. And I must say it was delicious. Everyone said that you couldn't tell at all that it was gluten and dairy free, so it was just universally good.

So. . . in the end it matters more that it's tasty than beautiful (which it was not), and much more important that it was a cake my gluten-and-dairy-free friend could actually have. She figured she had to give up on birthday cakes, so my mission was to prove she could have a normal, lovely cake just like anyone else. And she did, so I will call it a success.

Just like the campout! Because no one else is crazy enough to camp by a lake this early in spring, we had the campground to ourselves and didn't even pay a fee for it. 'Course there was no running water or trash either, but, it was worth the price!

 Once it got dark four of us succumbed to that wild, youthful impulse to go jump in the lake while it was so cold we could see our breaths, and we did. Then we ran back to the campfire and dried off around it, laughing our asses off.

It was a chilly night, to be perfectly honest, and I might've frozen my toes off just a little. But we were young and impulsive and free, and even though I may have pneumonia now, you know what? It was very much needed.

Practically invites a swim. The ducks are doing it.