Bats in the dust bowl
Bats in the dust bowl
“The Almond Orchard”: So I wake up in the tent [bat project] morning. how did i get here? im alone in a tent in an almond orchard with no pants. oh yeah i am here to do research but wtf its like noon. i run outside and see a car backing up, bye! i am too disoriented to stop her. i should have gone… all my stuff is in the car. my phone, wallet, ID, pants.
let me explain how i got here, the broader picture. you see, i went to australia to break some birds.. but thats another story and book. tracked down this lab and shit. didnt expect this job.
background about this job here ive just started. what we did up until this point.
morning of foraging, walked forever in the unchanging orchard, its so hot here. i went nearby and ate grapes, wiped on my shirt.
after 2 hours, she her beat up old white car eventually rolled back in. she was getting us coffee and ended up chasing a bat signal for over an hour and eventually lost it, or else who knows when she would have come back for me. musta been around 2pm.
i did this job for 2-3(?) weeks in the field weekends. (all the things we did).
we drove around and searched for signals in other orchards. i saw a dead dog and stood by it for a while holding the metal thing, abandoned again in some walnut orchard. orchards are creepy things people dont realize. they are like a forest, but earily geometrical, like all the chaos of nature is taken out. like wut!
errected the things, and collected bat blood and wings between 9pm-5am, backwards work hours. another girl too for a bit.
bat burrito. rabies shots. ugh.
eventually i realized i wasnt noctournal, but didnt want to quit. but the bats did, and so we spent the next few weeks in the lab instead, failing at processing the samples, widdling them down in numbers until nothing was usable.
she did tell me about a site in passing one day. where i could do abroad volunteering opportunities. and looked into that i did…
CHAPTER ONE
The Almond Orchard
Wake up in almond orchard:
I wake up in the tent [bat project] morning. how did i get here? im alone in a tent in an almond orchard with no pants. oh yeah i am here to do research but wtf its like noon. i run outside and see a car backing up, bye! i am too disoriented to stop her. i should have gone with… all my stuff is in the car. my phone, wallet, ID, pants. Let me explain how i got here, the broader picture. you see, i went to australia to look into some birds.. but thats another story and book. tracked down this lab and shit. didnt expect this job.
Background about this job here ive just started. what we did up until this point.
You see, I just came back from Australia where I spent the last three months dissecting birds for a friends lab. She was getting her masters in conservation, and that meant checking the digestive systems of marine foraging birds for traces of plastic. Why I had done that with my summer is a wholedifferent story, to which there is an entire book on. The point is, at this part of my life I am trying to expand my biology related knowledge. I never majored in biology, which probably surprise a lot of people because my entire life I've been a known lover of animals. And also smart enough to major in biology. I suppose because I did not want to be pegged as an animal person, who did not understand people. And that is why I majored in psychology and philosophy, to explore the more unknown part of this world and human nature has always eluded me. Animals I understood. Now it was time for getting jobs and figuring out what to do with my life, and I had. More then a little regrets about technically not being qualified to work with animals after that. Without some experience, that is. I learned that it is actually very easy to get work with animals, so long as you don't get paid. Costs will be covered if you do it right, but there really is no funding in biology. Like I said, there is still a great need for research getting done and grad students are happy to have some extra hands around the carcasses, or living carcasses, I mean creatures.
I was ready to explore that new part of my world, spending time working with animals, even though I already had a job during the week with autistic adults. And so, when I came back from Australia, I was planning to find a lab in town that I could work out locally. Maybe a weekend gig. Get some experience for possible biology grad school in the future. What I signed on for, was never intended, but a whole lot of new experiences...
That morning, I woke up in the almond orchard and found myself totally alone. After she pulled away, I didn't know what to do with myself. I took a morning walk in the orchard, which was immense. I walked and walked and walked down to one lane, and all the rows looked exactly the same as I walked on. It was very trippy, basically like a fun house mirror, except for just consisted of reality, intense inventory of repeating trees. The vast space just kept going, and I got bored of walking this endless road that led nowhere. I turned around and walked back to my tent,. It is weird, the walk back always seems shorter than the walk into nowhere. Especially when I could see attend as a goal and destination, and as far as I walked the wrong way, it felt like I was going nowhere in a vast ocean of trees.
It was hot, but still about noonish. It was too hot to go back in the tent, but I checked for supplies. I had only a watch and a blanket.
The watch was helpful for me to figure out how long I had been trapped for, and just had to rely on the fact that she would be coming back. Eventually. I was starting to get hungry. I pondered going to the house that was near the orchard, the owners who have graciously let us spend the night here. However, I remembered my boss girl telling me that it is notto save out here for a girl alone. I looked down, I was wearing a tank top and underwear. There was no other clothing around. I did not want to risk anything. My stomach growled. What would I do? I was never very good at holding onto hunger.
I walked to the edge of my orchard, and cross the street. There was an orchard next-door of grapes. They were in season and ripe. Probably not ripe enough for wine, but I was going to eat them raw. I plucked some simple green grapes from the vine, they were covered in dust, as was I and everything around us. I wiped the grape off with the edges of my tank top. And ate it. It was the most delicious thing. And so I did again. With each grade, the fear and excitement and anxiety about stealing some fruit got a little more intense, but the pleasing flavor and the hunger were so intense that I could and would not stop for anything. Actually, all these grapes needed something to go with them.… How about something crunchy, fruit and nuts go very well together. If only I had some nuts. Oh wait, I just spent all night in an almond orchard, conveniently located across the street!
I went back across, the dusty highway, and collect a few almonds from the floor. The almond scraper missed a few. I collected them in my hands, and went back to enjoying my shimmering fresh grape loves once more. As I ate the fresh trail mix as you will, I made sure to throw The crunchy almond exteriors back across the road to the orchard from where they came, not to arouse some suspicion. The almonds, in a sort of shriveled dried peach thing, which you crack open like a big pistachio and there is an encased nut in each one. You must then dig the edible part out of the shell within the husk. After a few, your fingers are a little bit tender. My shirt was no even more Dusty than it was before. I was running out of space to wipe off the grapes with before I was even full.
Anyway so we drive out there and there's this almond orchard in the middle of the dust bowl it's called the dust bowl because there are there is nothing around we drove through there right your member that yes so we drove through two hours of desert to get to this orchard. I have to say. Because that's the end of Anyway so we drive out there and there's this almond orchard in the middle of the dust bowl. it's called the dust bowl because there are there is nothing around we drove through there right your member that yes so we drove through two hours of desert to get to this orchard. I have to say. Because at the end of the
By late afternoon we were setting up these 2 to 3 story will want to three-story tall mist nets they're called Mist nets they catching bats but this girl actually invented her own version of it where they direct the the miss netting and if she created like around will structure and the basket trapped in there and then when they scream with sonar like oh no I'm trapped in here the other bats come and get stuck in there because they're trying to and rescue the face that. The funny thing is the young if there is no bad in there your chances of getting a bat is actually very low and your chances of getting a better tenfold if there is a bat so you don't want to take her back to quickly out or else you won't get another bad for a while but you can't leave it there too long because then it gets upset that you're leaving it there and it's cruel and it's sad and on the portal bad so you can do that either balance of that torture and that and future back to Orchard.
When we first arrived at the dustbowl orchard, we were met by some workers, latino men who wanted to help us set up. They tried to be all macho and helpful, maybe it was kindness or maybe they wanted something more, all I know is it was demeaning and disrespectful as taken by our grad student. She felt that they thought she could not do it herself or needed help, when she had in fact invented the device herself. And whatshe invented was A special three stories tall missed net that was based on a pulley system with PVC pipes. It was not easy to get it right, and that really was helpful with the guys helping us, I don't even think they realize how much genius this thing was and that she didn't just buy it. She even cut the PVC pipes herself.
The purpose of the study was to see if bats at farms that used pesticides, in comparison with those feeding at organic orchards, were ingesting harmful chemicals from the bugs they were eating, and if that caused any detrimental effects on their white blood cell count and lowered their immune systems.
We set up several one-story mist nets all over the orchard, that looked like ThinNet soft thin black and almost invisible. At night they would be especially invisible. That night, it would bemy duty to go find all the mist nets and check them for baths every half an hour or so. We would have to be clever and walk around them, our shoes crunching on the fallen uncollected almonds. The only light was a headlamp, which we would all wear, and it had three brightness settings. We would keep it on dimmest, our vision turning into a sort of Blair witch Project situation. Until we got to the nests, then we would turn it up to search for anything scratching or squiggling or arriving in the net. The problem of course being that you cannot get too close because you do not want to get scratched, and I definitely did not have my rabies shots. If I found a bat, I would return and the team would set out to collect it. We did not have very much luck on it the first night. It was rather boring sitting around for hours at a time, and our little camper chairs, in the middle of the night, often with no headlamp on. It was many phases of boredom followed by a brief time of rushing, stress, panic. When a bat was found. That is when the fun would really start. When I was bored I prayed for stress when I was stressed I prayed for board.
And it only gets worse so once you catch the bad we bring it to the table and is only happens about 9 PM or later because it's when that's going out and we have this little tiny table that set up in the orchard which is all very dusty by the way and are only light are these had torches that we used to see directly in front of us and around us and his table is crammed with biology equipment for data collection. These include several fine little tubes for blood sampling and syringes there was alto also a centrifuge and some different elixirs to properly store and preserve the samples. we also had bat bags. Once the bottles collected from the mist nets with a sturdy glove, you place it in the back bag. You then take it back to the table and collect A blood sample by puncturing a vein in the wing. One person holds the bat study and the other person pulls the blood and inserted into the canisters following directions. Remember all of this is done by headlamp in the pitch black orchard with absolutely no other lights around. We repeat this process, looking for the bats in the nets and sampling them, One leading bongo, until exhaustion and the late-night kick in, around 3 AM. Once you are out of baths and it is too late at night, you can then start cleaning up all the mist nets and materials, or go to sleep. I thought going to sleep would be the best, and doing that stuff in the morning,but that is why all my little he volunteer. Turns out, the bath can still get caught in there and that would be devastating, so you must take all of them down when you are done. That means you go to sleep around 5 AM. I went to sleep in my little tent and the grad students did the work that night, one of them left, and the other stayed up the whole night, I think she slept a little bit in her car though, and by morning, I had woken up in my tent around noon. That is where the story comes full circle, and how I ended up in that predicament, foraging for food with no way of contacting anyone.
After 2 hours, she and her beat up old white car eventually rolled back in. I was pretty pissed off by this point, and she was all become.she told me she was getting us coffee and ended up chasing a bat signal for over an hour and eventually lost it, or else who knows when she would have come back for me. It was then that she handed me the coffee, and offered me a ride to Wendy's. There we would have a real breakfast, but basically there was no other place to wash up or go to the bathroom, civilization was Wendy's. I was never so excited to see a fast food restaurant in my life. I never went into a fast food restaurant feeling disgusting and coming out feeling fresh and clean.
Gradstudet was a tough girl, she had broad shoulders and red hair, like a Scottish warrior. And a strong and give no fucks attitude to match. Sometimes, she drove the car with her knees. Freaked me out a little but I admired her courage, she really was fearless. This one time, a sketchy looking fellow approached us at a pitstop looking to buy him some money or cigarettes or something, giving us an appropriate looks. She stood up to him strongly, shooing him away.
These days I feel like that person, then again I was never so well-built. She is probably twice as strong as me physically that is.. I never had a strong frame, I have scoliosis. I was not built for the plow. Or the mist net lifestyle of bats. I often felt my excitement was ruining her mood, that she liked me because I was competent, but sometimes I did in fact talk a bit too much. The especially quiet types always think so, and the talkative types never do.
On the second week, we put a radio on a brown bat and the following morning, we followed it around using Telemetry, driving and walking in orchards and along roads with equipment, attempting to locate the radioed bat’s signal through the relevant channel and static. I was abandoned at random places, we also drove around together holding it out the window passing back-and-forth as dogs barked at us from farmhouses. We found a tree on someone's property, which we thought that was in, because we kept going in circles around it. I feel like it was faulty wiring. We never really did find the bat, even though we hunted about three hours on this wildis Chase. After bat season, which was decided by the bats we caught, or the lack of specific species, it was decided to migrate relief that we could not find purpose in going out there the third week. After that it was all lab work with processing samples we created in The first two weeks. Some tasks were fun because I remember collecting those samples, like staining The blood slides and counting blood cells under microscopes. Although looking under a microscope for too long makes you go insane I have decided. I don't know what ever happened to the wing clippings we hole punch, although that remains to this day one of the most gruesome tasks I have ever performed… And that includes scooping brains from severed birds heads (see book one for the adventure). The grad student was still perfecting her study and technique, so when we worked together, no results were found yet. In fact, we slowly whittled away at the data until there was really nothing left.all the things that remained were too small anyway I needed to be thrown out and she would start again next season. I did not have insurance coverage for the three rabies shots that would be required to continue next summer season, and decided to leave the lab after a six month commitment.
All in all, I decided bat research was not for me, Another important reason was because they were nocturnal and I was not. Also setting up and taking down those mist nets was a bitch.
Grad student even admitted to me that she could only do this work because she was a grad student, and could create her own hours, including to become nocturnal herself.
However, she did give me a piece of advice that led to a lot more, she told me one day in passing about the con via website which I used for my next adventure... Which led me to the Amazon of Peru...
Ch2: i did this job for 2-3(?) weeks in the field weekends. (all the things we did).
we drove around and searched for signals in other orchards. i saw a dead dog and stood by it for a while holding the metal thing, abandoned again in some walnut orchard. orchards are creepy things people dont realize. they are like a forest, but earily geometrical, like all the chaos of nature is taken out. like wut!
errected the things, and collected bat blood and wings between 9pm-5am, backwards work hours. another girl too for a bit.
bat burrito. rabies shots. ugh.
eventually i realized i wasnt noctournal, but didnt want to quit. but the bats did, and so we spent the next few weeks in the lab instead, failing at processing the samples, widdling them down in numbers until nothing was usable.
she did tell me about a site in passing one day. where i could do abroad volunteering opportunities. and looked into that i did…
Trapping using mist-netting, located in an almond orchard. Duties included setting up, taking down, routine checking, and assisting on extraction of different bat species from nets over multiple days, in hot desert temperatures.
Assisting in post-catch work, including measurement of bat, extracting and handling blood samples in a rugged environment, attaching radios to bats. All in almost complete darkness, with only headlamps and a folding table.
Telemetry, driving and walking in orchards and along roads with equipment, attempting to locate the radioed bat’s signal through the relevant channel and static.
After bat season, lab work with processing samples, including staining slides and counting blood cells under microscope.
stays cool under pressure, ex collecting blood from a tiny squirming bat who bleeds slowly, putting micro tubes in vein and putting right amounts in 5 little bottles without dropping, knocking, or spilling contents. And holding bat limbs steady while shaking contents of jars and keeping track of their contents while continuing to draw blood and open new needles for beeak punctures. All done with headlamps in the pitchdark night from.a single folding table in the field. Oh ya and worked with all these directed and changing roles on the spot. and didn't mess up anything even though it was her first time doing any of this. Including handling blood,and being up close to bats. One time, we put the bat in a bag, it became a bat burrito. i held it in a large gloove, but it was a very squirmy bat.
Gradstudent held it up close, the angry bat squirming in her hand, and said “aw i like it when they squirm, feisty”. it was scary because the animal had a huge pair of chomping teeth and enourmous ears.
(describe the bats more). they were surrpisingly tiny, with only about 3 inch tall bodies, and they had huge ears, larger than their little bitey faces, i would say they were overall so adorable!
Chapter two sample Title: Bat Blood by Lamplight.