Nicaragua Dispatch 2/19/2012-2 or Do I Have Bats in my Belfry?

Well, maybe not in my belfry but in my bedroom?  Well, maybe not in my bedroom but living in the ceiling?. Well, maybe not in the ceiling but under the Spanish tiles that cover the ceiling.

I was awakened at 4:30 this morning by a curious rustling.  I turned on the light and saw nothing unusual.  I turned off the light, sat in the dark waiting and the rustling returned along with squeals and high-pitched squeaks. I quietly realized that I was listening to bats returning from their nightly hunting adventure.

Five years ago,  when I visited Granada,  I enjoyed watching swallows hunting at dusk. Their artful dives in search of bugs that I couldn't see were the stuff of aerial ballet.  As darkness fell, however, they and their powerful but delicate glides, turns and swoops were replaced by free-falling daredevils who climbed and fell in impossible aerodynamic maneuvers that boggled the mind. The bats were on the wing!

I imagine the bats, coming home to their families afterward and talking about their prowess and their kills like old fighter pilots, then settling in for a good day's sleep (upside down, of course) dreaming of moths, grasshoppers, and mosquitoes.  Maybe there are bat bars where old veterans hang around, drinking bat beer, smoking bat cigarettes, and swapping war stories.  

I was in my room again, changing for a dip in the pool this afternoon, when I heard them rustling; squeaking, sounding, testing their radar in preparation for another night's hunt. They've been doing this for eons, part of the eternal war between mammals and insects, long before there were countries or cities or houses or Spanish tile roofs or tourists to listen to them.

It makes me proud to be of the order mammalia.