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From where I sit in the upstairs office of our home in Charlotte’s Elizabeth neighborhood, I can look down on the landscaped garden my partner has devoted so much time to over the past few years. There are all variety of plants and flowers and a fountain with a pond that contains a few koi. It’s not an overly large yard — but it is pleasant and private and we’ve spent many happy hours there.
This is the first year that I’ve noticed some unusual things taking place in our environment. Not the first time that I’ve noticed apparent changes overall — but the first time it’s hit so close to home.
Of course, I remember things like more snow when I was a child and a decided lack of it as I’ve grown older. Winters are beginning to seem almost non-existent in this part of the country — and summers are getting increasingly hotter with less and less precipitation.
All of us have noticed these things. Whether or not they are natural variations in the planet’s climatology I am unsure — but it is clear there is change going on all around us.
Looking just at my little backyard world I’m beginning to wonder if I’m seeing some evidence of what’s happening right here at home.
With the onset of spring I noticed what everyone’s been talking about — there were very few honey bees. Lots and lots of carpenter or “bumble” bees as I’ve heard them called before, but hardly any honey bees.
We put the birdfeeders and the hummingbird feeders back up — but I haven’t seen a single hummingbird so far. Wrens, robins, cardinals and finches have shown up pretty much status quo — but for some odd reason their newborns seem to be dropping to earth like flies. Tiny, pink, fuzzy white-feathered and just hatched, They’d live for a little while and then die — no parent ever coming to try and rescue them. It’s happened four times so far this summer.
Then there are the bats. Not so bad to have around, I’ve heard. They eat mosquitoes and make their home throughout this part of town en masse. With all the many old oak trees and turn of the 20th century houses that boast cavernous attics and shuttered windows, how could they resist?
They’ve nested behind our shutters before, but this is the first time any of them have tried to raise a family from the location.
The first baby bat fell from the second story window shutters to the brick porch below about a month ago. At first I thought it was a dry leaf or just some piece of refuse that had blown in from the front yard. I started to sweep it away with a broom, but then I noticed some movement. After bending down for a closer inspection, I realized what it was. Like the birds, it was tiny, barely the size of a quarter. Eyes still closed, hardly able to open its mouth and unable to make a sound.
I dashed to the back porch for a pair of thick gardening gloves. On the way back I grabbed a shoebox and an old T-shirt for some padding. Scooping the newborn up as gently as possible, I placed it on the soft fabric. It tried to stretch its wings a few times and it did turn its head in my direction, opening its mouth as though it were asking for something to eat.
I admit my reaction was purely instinctual and that I was out of my element when it came to infantile bat care, so I did a web search and found that milk and an eyedropper would suffice in the absence of its mother. I made a quick trip to the drug store around the corner for both.
I squeezed just a couple of drops of milk in to its mouth, hoping that it would somehow do some good. The effect it had was the complete opposite.
Almost immediately it curled up, lay over on its side and died. With my gardening gloves I placed its tiny body in the mulch underneath the dense bushes that line our porch.
A few days later, another baby bat appeared on our front porch. This one was already dead, so I swept its tiny carcass in to the mulch underneath the bushes alongside its sibling. Another week passed before a third bat appeared. This one was not so tiny — perhaps slightly larger than a silver dollar coin. Its eyes weren’t open yet, but its pointy little ears had already sprung lose from either side of its head. Clearly still a baby and unable to care for itself, it had managed to affix itself to the brick exterior on the front of our house between the first and second floors.
This time I decided I would do nothing. Since it was so close to its mother, perhaps she could coax it back up.
I went about my business, checking back a couple of hours later to see if there had been any new developments. Although it had stretched its wings out and changed positions slightly, it never really moved from the same brick it had been clinging to since I first spotted it.
Later in the evening I finally noticed an adult bat with a furry brown face peaking its head out from underneath the shutters, making a high-pitched squeaking sound in an effort to communicate with its offspring.
The infant took notice and attempted to locate the origin of the sound, but was apparently to weak to make the climb back up to where its mother was roosting.
Again, I thought my best course of action was to do nothing.
As the sun was going down and no progress had been made, I decided it was time to give nature a helping hand.
With the aid of a step ladder and the gardening gloves, I moved quickly. I pried the little bat from the wall as it flapped its wings and both mother and baby squeaked back and forth. Placing the latest attempt at rescue in another shoe box, I bounded up the stairs to the second floor window, sliding it and the exterior screen open just enough to allow the bat to crawl over to the bottom of the shutter and rejoin its mother.
This time I was successful, and I haven’t seen any more wayward bat orphans since.
All of this made me start to think — was there a connection between the declining bees, hummingbirds and the bird and bat deaths?
Then I discovered this report from the Boston Globe:
Less of a buzz in North America.
Pity the honeybee, hummingbird, and bat. And possibly us.
A report issued by the National Academy of Sciences said that the three species are “demonstrably” declining in the United States and Canada, and that their losses are affecting not just their populations — but potentially parts of various ecosystems, including some parts of our food supply.
The birds, bees and bats are pollinators, and nearly three-quarters of all flowering plants depend on them to spread pollen so that fertilization can occur and fruits, nut and vegetables can grow.
Some scientists also believe that global warming may be playing a role in the decline of birds and bees and the flowering plants that they keep alive. Under that reasoning — slight increases in temperatures may be altering the migration patterns of bumblebees … causing plants to flower earlier in the season, thus throwing off the process of pollination.
“We’re starting to see signals of pollinators declining,” said Allison Snow, a professor of biology at Ohio State University. “We don’t know yet whether it is a looming crisis. But what we are seeing is very disturbing. We know how important these pollinators are, and if they disappeared, we would be in deep trouble.”
I’m not a global warming alarmist — but additional reports I’ve discovered that confirm increasing numbers of total species extinctions within the last century also add to the cause for concern. Are we damaging our planet beyond repair? Is it too late to do anything about it?
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