Click through for the close-up (I differentially adjusted the light levels in the crack and wall portions of the photo, which accounts for the slightly artificial look)

Bats are long-lived creatures — in stark contrast to most mammals their size — so in one sense it’s not surprising that this little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) has been coming back to roost every spring for at least the past six years, which is as long as I’ve been keeping track. But with the epidemic known as white-nose syndrome now beginning to decimate populations of bats in nearby hibernacula, I didn’t expect to see this guy again. I decided to annoy him for a couple more minutes, just long enough to snap his picture for posterity.

No white nose yet — though last summer, he was briefly white from head to toe. The house was getting a long-overdue paint job, and it was seriously disturbing his sleep. When I scraped under the portico roof, I was careful not to get too close, but when I started blasting the adjacent wall with the pressure-washer, he came sailing out like a bat out of hell — a really, really wet hell.

So when it came time to paint, I guess the smell got to him and he decided to flee again, only this time, for some reason, he dove straight into the bucket of paint. Our caretaker Paula was the painter, and she let out a yell that brought me running. Good thing she’s not as slow-witted as I am, though. She grabbed him before he could fly away or start grooming himself, carried him into my laundry room, and very gently washed the paint from his fur and parchment-thin wings in a trickle of tap water while her husband Troy and I watched and offered advice.

You have never seen a more ugly and pitiable creature than that soaking wet bat. Fortunately, it was a warm day. I scrounged up a cardboard box to put him in until the paint dried in a couple of hours — we were afraid he’d try to crawl back into his crack and get wet paint on himself again. Toward evening when we finally released him, though, he flew off into the woods, and he didn’t return for several days. But return he did, and there wasn’t a trace of paint on him. He’s a survivor.

view of the portico showing the bat's location

I wonder if he ever misses the teeming maternal colony of his first summer. Perhaps, like humans, bats don’t remember their infancy. Some might say they don’t remember much at all, lacking (as far as we know) a symbolic language, but he certainly remembers his spot behind the portico each year. And bats and humans might be expected to have a little bit in common, since we’re both long-lived social animals — except when we’re not, and go off and live as a recluse for a while. Even though I rarely see him, I enjoy knowing he’s there, ten feet from where I write. If he doesn’t return next spring, it’ll be just a little bit lonelier around here.

A biologist friend sent me the link to this slide presentation on white-nose syndrome last night, but it took me until this afternoon to muster the strength to watch it. I think the fact that it’s still images — and very fine photos at that — actually makes it harder-hitting than if it were a true video. While I’ve never agreed with the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, pictures plus spoken words make for a very potent combination. It’s not the information per se, most of which I’d already known, but had been managing to keep on a somewhat abstract level.

Bats play a pivotal role in eastern forest ecosystems because they consume a very large quantity of insects. What effect will their disappearance have on forest trees — or on crops, for that matter? But more than that, it’s terrible to be losing these creatures which are wondrous and beautiful and important for their own sake. I hate to always talk about extirpation or extinction in terms of the effects on us and other species, as if that’s the main reason why it matters, though it’s an ecological truism that, as John Muir put it, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” And bats on summer evenings are woven inextricably into some of my fondest memories of childhood.

There’s no obvious, conclusive lesson here, not yet, though I’ve heard suggestions that the white nose fungus might be native to Europe, and might have been brought here accidentally by cavers. There doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it, though obviously biologists are rushing to learn all they can in hopes of preventing its spread, or at least helping to save remnant populations of the affected species. Congress recently approved $1.9 million to study white-nose syndrome, and you can keep up with other developments in this story at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website. There’s a form there that you can use to report unusual bat behavior or deaths if you live in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Hampshire or Vermont. You could also join Bat Conservation International, the world’s leading scientific advocacy organization for bats.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the epidemic won’t effect some of the more solitary, forest-dwelling species, and will be limited to those who spend the winter in large hibernacula, but that’s probably wishful thinking. I’m not really sure why I’m sharing all this. You’re either going to shrug, if you’re not much of a nature lover, or, like me, become uselessly distraught. I don’t have the words to express how this makes me feel. After watching the above presentation, I proceeded to burn dinner — something I haven’t done in years, if ever — and break a favorite casserole lid. “This is not my day,” I said by way of lame explanation. But for the bats, this is evidently not their century.