lindsay - 7-13-2005 at 10:49 PM
This bat adventure takes us back to Mulege and not Gotham City...and if you haven't read Osprey Baja Bat post, do check it out. I realize now that I
should have actually put this post with his story but it's getting late and the mind gets punchy at this hour...
Anyway, Osprey's tale had me thinking about how many creatures that I had no previous firsthand experiences with became up close and personal vecinos
during my time in Mulege. My adventures to a Mulege bat cave were courtesy of a zoologist from the San Diego Zoo and SD Natural History Museum who was
helping to train my students so they could inform visitors to the Mulege Museum about the area's natural history. Sounds great, educational,
enriching, etc. but I'm thinking of swooping, teeth bearing bats from B horror movies...
But when you're hanging with "Batboy" pro nature guy, real name Scott, you gotta play it cool (more about that if you want to read about setting snake
and lizard traps with him in the dessert under Osprey's Baja Bat thread...). So, no acting lame, screaming or otherwise like an amateur...Batboy is a
pro, I'm the teacher so I have to set an example for the students, right?? That's the party line as an educator, be the calm, cool and collected one
for the kids' sake.
Alright, so how did we even find this bat cave in the first place?? Well, that's the great part about Mulege...people love to share their insights on
interesting places and favorite spots. They see your interest in learning and discovering the area and the doors open. So, with Scott talking to one
of the town's INAH (Mexico's governmental agency for overseeing historical or archeological sites) reps at the museum, the local rep says we've just
gotta climb up this one hillside down the road from the mission and near the local high school so we can see this great bat cave. How lucky I'm
thinking just near the students' school in their own backyard, their very own bat cave. Stay cool, no problem, this is educational, I repeat my
mantra...to the Bat Cave, Robinito!!
So, our private Dicovery Channel episode begins before sunset, a very important detail Scott explains. Why?? I say to myself as Scott quickly adds for
my students...you always enter a cave to watch bats before it gets dark because once it's dark, our flying friends are ready to party and the flying
fiesta starts...best not to be in the way or I imagine it's like a cross between a flapping mosh pit with a little Hitchc-ck mixed in.
So, with our local INAH friend, Chicho, leading us up the dusty hillside, I imagine the cave to come but stay cool. We arrive at a flat spot on the
hill and there is a wide opening to the cave but you need to crouch down to enter it. Scott goes first with Chicho to survey the scene then tells us
to enter one by one and keeps each group to 4 people at a time.
The bat cave is a pungent place to enter as the guano collection is quite something but the walls are a calm scene of hundreds of bats hanging like
dark icicles. A few dive and swoop through the cave but it's not a menacing flight. With Scott and Chicho, we all feel at ease and realize that the
creatures we're often taught to fear from childhood hold little danger. They are just hanging out and getting ready for night to come. So, as the
cliche goes fear of the unknown really can be worse than the reality...
daveB - 7-14-2005 at 12:33 AM
We drove a steadily worsening tract in an old 28 foot motorhome to a point where it looked like recent storm damage and heavy rain might suck us in
and keep us. We stopped and a couple with us rode ahead on bicycles to check the possiblity of our reaching the day's destination, Agua Caliente.
They returned, happily vowing to carry on; the road got a bit better ahead.
There are dozens of hot springs in the big country of Mexico with the same name, but this one is a few miles, perhaps a dozen, removed into the hills
from Santiago, BCS. There it bubbles faintly into a very small pool not far from a dam, or wier, with an adjacent aquaduct of sorts. Soon we had
scouted the area, and were set to camp for a couple of nights on a widened portion of the roadway. Accross from us and down the road were a few
scattered campers mostly in tents or in vans. From one group we learned of a daily ritual that transpired not more than fifty feet from where we'd
stopped.
It was the bat Flyaround. What else would it be called when, just before the sun dipped below the mountains, hundreds of bats would emerge from what
we believed could have been the aquaduct itself to fly in circles just below the road. We watched the spectacle in amazement. We saw some bats were
getting caught in foliage, some got out, others needed our help. On a rock and directly in their flight path we sat with a video camera as others
continued to untangle bats. Some glanced gently off shoulders and arms as the camera rolled; an owl swooped down and scooped an imprisoned one from
of a tree, an early evening snack.
In a few minutes it was over. Where had the bats gone? They were in plain view, untold numbers of them hanging gracefully around a large boulder,
waiting for the fall of darkness to fly again.
[Edited on 7-14-2005 by daveB]