A MOUSE ON WINGS
“What’s that?” whispered Snookie, as the cubs were starting out one
evening in the glow of the long June sunset to explore a new part of the
woods.
“A bird, of course!” Chinook told her, as an orange-winged creature that
at first looked as large as a crow swooped and darted after the flying
insects which were its prey. But as the cubs came nearer, they could see
that the body that carried those wide wings was only the size of a
sparrow’s.
“It is not a bird,” said Snookie, “It has no feathers.”
“It’s a mouse, then,” guessed Chinook.
“Did you ever see a mouse fly?” asked his sister scornfully.
“Well, you see one now, don’t you?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not,” for by now the cubs could see that
the strange creature had perfectly naked wings that looked as thin as
maple leaves, and that its little body was covered with fine fur. It was
Nyc-ter-is, the bat, and except that he had no particular tail, he did
look more than a little like a mouse, though his face and ears were
rounder. His fore arms seemed to be fast to the first half of his wings,
and there three of his fingers had grown so long that they held out the
rest of the wing like the ribs of an umbrella. His thumbs, which came
just halfway along the upper edge of the wing, had great hooked claws on
them, and Snookie wondered what they could be for. He was altogether the
queerest looking small person the cubs had ever seen, as he swooped and
circled after moths and crickets and mosquitoes.
Chinook made a leap to catch him and have a closer look, but quick as
was the little bear, the bat was quicker. He squeaked viciously, and
showed his teeth, which grated together warningly.
“You little fiend!” laughed Chinook. “Are you really threatening to bite
us?”
“I’ll certainly fight if I have to!” the eerie mite assured them in a
high-pitched squeak that they understood as plain as bear talk, and off
he darted to the limb of a tree, where hung his mate, head downward.
The cubs followed curiously. It looked as if Mrs. Red Bat had simply
hung herself up by her thumbs, with her wings folded. “That’s one way of
taking a nap,” Chinook exclaimed, “Let’s try it!”
“Oh, look!” cried Snookie, “she’s got four baby bats!” And sure enough,
there were the wee mites, having their supper and hanging from their
mother’s teats.
They watched for a while. Just at dusk the mother bat flew off to get
her own supper, but though they had been watching closely, the cubs
could not see what she had done with her babies. There seemed to be no
nest, and though they climbed the tree to find out, there was not the
sign of a baby bat anywhere to be found. Then when the cubs had
forgotten all about it in the fun of chasing crickets, she suddenly
swooped so near that they could plainly see her. What was their
amazement to find that she still carried the four little bats clinging
to her teats! They must have been heavy youngsters, too; but her wings
were powerful, being so large for such a small body, and her devotion
seemed to be equal to that of any other mammal.
That same June the Ranger and his Boy came, one day, upon a mother red
bat hanging head downward, asleep, with her little ones, with her thumbs
hooked in a low branch of a seedling yellow pine; but so still she hung,
and so like the tree trunk was her orange tint, that even in full
sunlight she might have escaped observation, had the Boy not been
uncommonly accustomed to using his eyes. Gently he reached out a hand
and lifted one of the baby bats from where it clung to its mother. It
was too sleepy to protest. Its wee face looked as grotesque as that of a
gnome the size of his thumb.
“Dad, do you suppose I could tame it?” the Boy asked the Ranger.
“It might die for need of its mother’s milk,” his father told him, “But
I once tamed a half-grown bat. They make gentle pets if you treat them
right, but if they consider it necessary to their safety, they can bite
ferociously.
“Most of our bats migrate South about September. I have heard sailors
say that they sometimes fly hundreds of miles to reach the islands of
the tropics.
“These red bats, and their cousins the big hoary bats, are clean enough;
but when I was down in Mexico I found a species that had the most
disagreeable musky odor. They used to collect literally by the hundreds
about old buildings and in church belfries and wherever they could find
a dark cranny to hide in, till they simply made it impossible for people
to come near. Those Mexican bats are the kind that live in eaves and
ruins—”
“And in Hallowe’en pictures?”
“I dare say! As they fly only in the dark, I suppose they need their
scent to help take the place of sight. They go with the Gila monsters
and rattle-snakes.”
“What good are they, anyway?” wondered the Boy.
“People used to think them just an unmitigated pest, those smelly
Mexican bats. But they do eat mosquitoes. I suppose they do their part,
down in the malarial districts, in helping to exterminate the malarial
mosquitoes. They certainly do devour incredible numbers of insects, so I
suppose they have their place in the scheme of things.
“Be that as it may, we do have a bat, the big-eared desert bat, that is
known to help the farmer, and that deserves to be protected, just as
much as the insect-eating birds. But people generally kill them on
sight. These nice clean red bats, too, help to keep the Balance of
Nature. I have never killed one in my life.”
The Boy’s eyes marvelled as he gently gave the wee bat to its sleeping
mother.