We were sitting out back after having just enjoyed a fabulous dinner prepared by our neighbors Ann and Gilles. It was that time of evening, around 10pm, when it’s not yet absolutely dark, but the sun has set; the dusk having just slipped into twilight and the breeze beginning to finally cool after another scorcher of a day. I was drinking my umpteenth Perrier and contemplating my umpteenth trip to the potty, when I looked out over the orchard and saw a small brown winged creature swooping into a tree.
I assumed it to be a small owl beginning it’s nights hunting, but on second look out toward the trees I noticed dozens more of these brown winged things and realized they were bats.
Not scary screeching black ‘Batman Begins’ bats, but small graceful brown bats. They were flying, swooping and diving into the trees. I don’t know much about bats and didn’t get a good enough view of them in the almost total dark to see what type of bat they might be, so I don’t know if they were diving into the trees for the shriveled and desiccated remains of cherries or for the bugs that might be drawn to the little black and shriveled ex-fruit.
They were amazing to watch though, gracefully and silently flying in and out of branches. At one point one of them flew right towards the back of Gilles head and at the last moment made a 90° turn back up into the sky, Gilles remaining ignorant of his near miss with something small brown and silent. It was even more amazing that within about 20 minutes in that quickly fading twilight they were gone again. On their way to greener pastures (dried icky cherries can’t be much of a meal) or they had never been there to feed in the first place; just to visit and move on. I was sad to watch them all slowly disappear; they seemed so peaceful and friendly.
No comments:
Post a Comment