The bats are back. I don’t know where they go for the winter. They do not migrate, so they must find some space that holds their bodies safe for the winter. I recently heard that hibernation is not the same as sleep. In fact, many animals, after waking from hibernation, usually have to nap. I feel them.
And what do they do in their tiny caves? They must live somewhere on the island, as they focus their energy simply in the area that is closest to them, and there are so many who use our airspace for their nightly hunts. Perhaps it is in the old house, a group of them, living in an old belfry, surviving off the swarms of insects who live and die on our tiny island.
I was reading that the reason people do not particularly like bats is because they are interstitial creatures. They fly, but are not birds. This mammal with avian tendencies then upsets our neatly defined order of things, as our Linnaean system starts to break down. I do not subscribe to such a theory. The world is full of very complex beings, each one defying any real definition. The categories created are nothing more than a guideline to group animals together who might share more than one defining feature. Nobody begrudges the platypus in all of its confusing structure and overlapping boundaries. The difference is that bats are kind of scary. They fly without the smooth movement of feathers, so they must pound their wings constantly, making us feel a bit of panic, as if the animal were always deranged, or at least a little inebriated.
Then there is the look of their faces. They do not have cute faces. Not in the least. They have a freaky overbite, huge ears, and a wild look in their eyes. They are like flying gremlins, here to search and drunkenly destroy.
But the other, and more salient feature of bats has nothing to with their look. The reason that they are cast in such a poor light has more to do with a question of cohabitation. Besides being interstitial, bats live in human spaces. This has always been a problem for animals that find themselves in areas designated as human-only. They, like raccoons and rats, do well with humans. this is because we create nice places in homes for them to sleep, with warm pockets for the winter. We also produce an enormous amount of waste. This, in turn attracts other creatures, including an incredible amount of insects. Therefore, our furry, winged, almost-friends do quite well within human society.
Humans like animals, but they like two types: the animals in the wild (wolves, caribou) or the ones that are domesticated (dogs, horses). But what about those interstitial creatures that exist within the space in between wild and domestic, those who do well in human landscapes but can easily avoid our violence? This is what a bat does. It is the third group known as vermin (coyotes, deer) that people cannot abide. Their interstitiality is not due to any issue of taxonomy, rather their ability to define human-bat relationships by living within human environments, without our approval. They are successful and uncontrollable. Bats’ cultural and evolutionary power is derived from their ability to hang in just about any location, as long as it is dark, and wait for the night to come. Then they have the run of the streets, swinging wildly through our minds, catching our eyes only in the dusk light, so we know they remain just over our heads, circling.
It was this knowledge that gave rise to such stories of ill-repute. Our winged neighbors would give people frights when making forays into the recesses of their houses, or their master’s house. This is what probably gave way to the idea of vampires – as powerful people would own large houses – and bats could be seen exiting their residences as darkness began to fall. It is of no little coincidence that such stories told of vampires were always of well-to-do men, forcing beautiful maidens to fall victim to their charms. If one were to compare this to the stories of werewolves (wolves being another animal that was once considered vermin until eradicated in almost all human-populated regions), a different story is told. There is a class difference in which werewolves were usually of lower class, bit by a wolf while collecting firewood or hunting, and then forced to prowl on the full moon. The difference being the spatial organization of the creature in question. A bat comes from a large house, within the structure of society, and therefore is dangerous to those most integrated into the social strata, while wolves are a danger to those on the fringes, who wander into the wilderness. It is the wolf that inspires nightmares, but the bat is more insidious, finding its way from the houses of wealth wherever it likes under a veil of decorum and the cloak of night.
Within these stories of werewolves and vampires, there comes an assumption that these animals are dangerous, yet neither of them really contain any real threat to humans. It is more the concept of space that gives them their emotive power, each interfering in human world, one from within and one from without. These vermin lie not so much at the taxonomical fringes, more at the fringes of civilization, standing as a constant reminder of the animal world that exists all around us – one that can never be fully under our control.
Bodies of Water 