Bats!!

Had the pleasure of accompanying a colleague of mine to survey the oasis for bats!!!  Great experience, great night.  I knew we had bats, and see some small ones at dusk frequently, but if you think birds are difficult to identify, try identifying something flitting madly about in pitch blackness.

Pallid bat in flight at dusk.

So she had her Anabat - a high tech listening device that detects and records the sounds that bats make as their sonar insect detection mechanism tics into action.  She used the detector while her assistant and I wielded our trusty high beam torches.  We would highlight them as they flew by so she could follow them. We saw lots and lots of small bats that she identified as pipistrelles and California myotis bats.  These are the bats I am familiar with.  As the night weighed in around us, and the half moon started up the dome of heaven, as the stars started to shine, but the sun light was still enough to break the darkness, this great big bat - it must have been 3-4 times bigger than the rest - came floating by.  WOW.  How cool was that.  It was a pallid bat.  It was really big.  I guess I just thought of bats as small, unless it was a jungle-living-fruit-eating bat. Saw several of them fly by.  Then we heard (but did not see) a yellow bat.  This was the bat I was hoping for.  One of them flew by and she detected it on Anabat.  Several minutes later another came by.  I think the third or fourth fly-by, I happened to catch it in my spotlight.   It really has yellowish pellage on the belly and kind of a darker head.

I had a chance to practice with my new camera...quite a challenge catching bats in flight.  Got a couple decent ones, though.

It made my day.  It was a good lesson in stress relief.  I had had a really rough week, and the strain of it was telling on me.  The focus, the night, the moonlight, the quiet talk among friends, the flittering of the bats:  in a few short hours the strain was relieved. I felt better than I had in days.  The lesson:  get your mind completely off what is going on and do something that will focus your mind in a new direction.

Thunderstorms

Summer thunderstorms are my favorite!!!

I grew up in the desert southwest.  There are two things I think are quintessential "desert": thunderstorms and night skies.

Thunderheads building up over the mountains.

A thunderstorm starts building early:  the humidity builds, the sun scorches, the heat becomes heavy and full.  As the day progresses, clouds start to build up along the mountain tops:  huge columns of thick gray cloud, tinted with the pink and gold of sunset.  As night slinks silently over the overheated soil, air columns start to rise, twisting the cloud columns into grotesque and beautiful forms. And then, as the sun sets, lightening starts to flash along the horizon, morse-code for "God is Alive and Well, but only cares as much as you do".

Then the electricity sparks and seems to emmanate from our very bodies. As night sets the flashing continues, pulsing at the rate of my heart.

I sleep well under the eerie sight.

It's too darn hot!!

Okay, now it is hot.  Over 110 this week, maybe up to 116.  I wonder if the incidence of crimes of passion go up with the heat?  I know it can make me cranky and irritable.  I know it is getting hot when I have a bout of near-dehydration...even though I am drinking a lot!!

Desert tortoise feasting on forbs.

This kind of heat stops most activity. My tortoises are mostly underground...I only see them every few days.  Now they know how to deal with this: estivate!!! We have our air conditioners and coolers, malls and swimming pools.  I was thinking, though:  I remember when we had only what my friend calls desert coolers, and no air in the car.  Even 10 years ago I remember trying to stay cool in my apartment without air.  We did it then. Now we seem to think that there is no life in the desert without air conditioning and swimming pools.

My air conditioning went out in my car a few years ago.  My friends were flabbergasted when I opted to wait for a couple years before buying a new car or repairing my AC, and live through the summer without.  Well, we never used to have them. Pretty strange how a matter of a few years can disappear the reality of an earlier time.  And we are not talking the "olden days!!!"

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate my AC, but I have only had it for the last 4 1/2 years.  I just think we need to remember where we have come from so we can truly appreciate what we have.  Only then can we appreciate the cost.

Summer Rain

Woke up this morning to the scent of summer rain.  If water can smell hot, then summer rains here smell hot. The pungent scent of the creosote and the wet leaves of the desert willow, in tandem with the air thick with water and the sky painted up with clouds make for a scent as thick as honey and as heady. The moisture in the air sucks the brilliance out of the sky: the haze cuts the desert asure blue.

Today is a lazy day.  It is the Fourth of July.  Should be a great celebration of our Nation's independence.  Like so many holidays, it is lost in the soup of material madness. Yes, I enjoy the fireworks, although not under my window at 3 am.  And I do appreciate this country, having seen a bit of others. So yes, I am cynical about it all, but I love having a lazy day to smell the rain, read, drink my morning joe at leisure and think about my life.

I think about what my parents are leaving for us and what my generation is leaving for our children.  Hmmm. I think about how much firecrackers scare my dog and keep me awake, and yet how fun to watch them burn -- there is a little pyromaniac in all of us.  I can smell the neighborhood bbqs, although I am not participating in that particular ritual, but the smell is tantalizing, and my dog keeps putting her nose to the wind and tasting it. No, we shall close the doors, and she will huddle and shake as the fireworks go off and I will comfort her and drink sweet tea and read a good book.  And appreciate my life.