Bats Deserve Better

Dear Bats, Who Deserve Better:

I owe you an apology, and thought if I took time to write everything down, in a nice letter, you might believe I am being sincere and if at all possible, want to make amends. They say it’s never too late for that. Here goes -

Way back when I was a little girl, I was scared to death of bats. They, I mean you, had two related characteristics that were the main reasons I trembled at the thought of meeting one. Bats were going to land on your neck and suck your blood (vampire style, of course). Or they would bite you and you would die. The first case meant dying and becoming a vampire. The second just meant dying. Neither situation sounded pleasant. A third characteristic was that you would fly into our hair, get all tangled up, and we - I - wouldn’t be able to get free ever. 

This last situation was every bit as scary, because I had long hair, down to my waist, and the idea of being moored to a bat touched every bit of my claustrophobia and maybe some of my tendency to not like being touched. The medical profession has a diagnosis for that now, but I get really strung out when any human gets too close to me. Animals like cats, dogs, birds are usually safe, though. As to my phobia regarding winged nocturnal mammals, they’re not going to help me.

I continue. 

Perhaps the Halloween decorations we had when I was little created some childish fear? Back then the items were mostly orange and black, with hints of yellow and green. There were no particularly frightful bats, and I even made some out of paper because they were so easy. No teeth, though. Why would one character be more unpleasant than others, such as ghosts and witches? Was it because ghosts and witches are just from our imagination and aren’t real? Possibly. Out of the whole hellish cast, along with these two, even zombies, ghouls, live mummies, blobs, etc. etc., bats were the real characters I could very well encounter in my back yard or on a fishing trip.

Nobody ever had anything nice to say about them. Maybe that was the problem. 

Poe might be to blame as well. We all know he was the first master of horror for a lot of readers and he sure wrote about gruesome situations, with creepy characters. Since I read everything by him when I was quite young, maybe he’s the cause? Except when I checked on the bats he wrote about, I only found the following: raven, (conqueror) worm, penguin, horse, scarab, moth, orangutang, and - I’ll never forgive him for this - cat. Black, of course. (I love black cats, always have, and have had three of them in my life.)

So Edgar Allan is not guilty of my phobia. Maybe I sensed my mother’s fear? Children do learn a lot of good and bad things from their parents. As I recall, she always shuddered when anyone mentioned the animal. Maybe she cringed thinking of one getting tangled in her hair. Maybe it was all an act as she celebrated the month of October with decorations, invitations to parties, making fantastic costumes, baking cookies, and stocking up on candy for the big night. Hers was a friendly brand of spooky and she had quite the collection of cardboard skeletons, some classier than others. Antiques now, they still are more agile than the ones in stores today.

Oh, I almost forgot that on one or two occasions a bat got into the house where I grew up. The first time I was at least ten and slept downstairs. My parents were sleeping upstairs. All the lights were out and everyone was in bed. Then thump! Something landed on my bed and it was clear (?) what it was. It was a big old house, so my screaming must have lasted an hour until my parents rushed in to hear what had surely happened. In my mind, and it was possible, since old houses have those skinny spaces for things to get in.

There really was a bat, seen by about four people, having slipped under the attic door and out into the light that shone over a puzzle on the dining room table. My father was in his last months of life, but frail as he was, he tried to protect us and capture the intruder. He did. That’s a war veteran for you. Anyway, now I feel guilty that Dad had to drag himself up for us - cringing females - when there was so little left of his big heart. This memory alone did not endear you to me, dear bat friends.

I’m thinking about witches now. They never scared me in the slightest. Maybe girls tended to fear them less, and there were lots of bad stories about witches being condemned for lustful reasons, so unjustly. There were also strong women stories that started to indicate, even to a little girl, that witches were cool. They didn’t conform and they knew a lot of stuff. Since feminism entered my life, I’ve been amazed at just how much stuff those rogue women know and how far back in time their knowledge goes. Every negative thing I might have gotten hung up on as a little girl as far as witches go, never registered, and that’s that. To be admired, not feared.

I could go on and on about why I think some things or beings never took root in my personal field of fear, but much of what I think is hard to prove. At first I didn’t believe in ghosts when others did. I’m referring to people like my grandparents, staunch Methodists but partakers in séances to resolve their grief. Then I wanted to believe, especially when, years later, Galician folklore came into my life and the rituals surrounding the spirit world suddenly began to fascinate me beyond belief. I wondered if it was my bi-Celtic and Swabian heritage that led me to want to walk with the dead? See what I mean about hard to prove?

So I bet we can agree that these ramblings aren’t pertinent to bats and why they make me shudder still, albeit only half the time now. To improve my relationship with an innocent animal, I decided at last to act. Had to untangle my ego from under the veiny, leathery black wings to overcome the phobia whose origin remained a mystery and made my conscience hurt. 

At this point I will save paper and ink - I do hope you like the color, ‘batwing black’ (just kidding) - and will ramble a bit, tossing out theories as to why the fear…

Were you bats always portrayed as the bad guys on TV, in comics, in YA books? Like stories of the Wild West or even the first American colonies had one possible good guy stereotype. Did kids tease me when it was dusk and they said flying mice would get caught in my long hair? That reminds me of the word for bat in German, die Fledermaus, the Wizard of Oz scene, or even The Birds. We should also include Stephen King’s The Dark Half. From there we go to the symbol of sparrows as messengers to the Other World. Does this have anything to do with my phobia? Does it release me from the guilt of discrimination? Am I bat-shaming you?

Now we might consider that the German language is linguistic proof that mice flying and bats were similar. Bat, however, is Middle English or Old Swedish (natbakka), if we are to believe internet sources. I don’t know if it’s the flying part or the potential gouging that terrifies people so much. For further research regarding the terms for your animal group, I’d look up murciélago (Spanish) and morcego (galegoportuguês), but that’s futile. It really doesn’t give me any excuse from my past attitude, in other words. I know I was prejudiced.

I want you all to know I wrote a poem some years back, devoting it to a little batgirl who bravely migrates from Mexico northward annually, but whose survival is questionable due to loss of habitat. The poem is in a book called Dire Elegies and is quite sad about all the animals who are disappearing. However, I was thinking about you when I wrote and submitted the poem. It was published in a book, as I said, which hopefully means something. I even used the poem title as the title for my letter.

In my current home, in the backyard, there is a bat-house. I might argue that a cat house is more necessary, and my cats would agree, but maybe it was my hope of appeasing you that made me do it. I went out and bought the thing; it’s good quality. Maybe I hoped someone would set up housekeeping in the little wooden box and, in passing, tidy up the mosquito population in back. Just a thought. To be honest, since the casita went up, I’ve only heard a couple of bat-like squeaks in the early evening, so I don’t know if it has any residents.

What else have I done to make up for our lost friendship? Well, I’ve read a little online. I’ve tried to learn some interesting facts, and any time I run across a BBC documentary on nature or a National Geographic issue, I always pay attention, because when you learn about somebody, you begin to have respect for them, not just tolerate or avoid them. You don’t need me to list all I’ve learned, but trust me, I’m a convert. It took me a long time, but I’m there with you now. You’re a fascinating group of beings. Perhaps very misunderstood. From a different culture and speaking echolocation style rather than chirping or communicating normally, in Finnish, Dutch, Greek, or some human system. 

At the risk of sounding overly too effusive and thus insincere, which you know is not my case, I will leave you with a question: Do you think was I’ve done is sufficient to achieve redemption in your eyes? If so, I have to try it on a few remaining phobias, to whit: Snakes, Rats (please don’t be offended), Cockroaches (aaarrrgggh, even the word grates on my skin), and what are essentially Tight Spaces, especially when underground. 

The last of these is one fear I can definitely blame on Poe, who loved small spaces.

Best Wishes From Your Friend,

Bat 

(Yes, that’s my real name. I changed my real name - Barbie - to the Egyptian cow goddess Bat because she seemed like somebody to emulate. Plus, her name might be short, but it’s made of two parts - ba and t - that speak to women’s identity. Pretty powerful thinking.)