So I have been told that since I no
longer work on the third largest naval base in the world and now that I am at
more liberty to share my stories that I should bring my blog back. There are
several fantastic tales from my time in Indiana and if you ever should find
yourself sharing a pint with me I will be more than happy to tell them but they
will not appear here in my blog. I have shifted from military base work to
living and working within a national park and field work never ceases to
provide a plethora of tales to share which makes day to day work anything but
boring. I will try and share these stories as accurately as I remember them.
The Celtic band Gaelic storm has a
song whose chorus passes along the message “don’t let the truth get in the way
of a good story” but I am more inclined to align myself with Mr. Sherlock
Holmes who in all his wisdom stated “Life is infinitely stranger than anything
which the mind of man could invent.”. This is the spirit in which I will
continue to write my blog.
I know that I have been working
here in Mammoth cave National park for a few weeks now but I still want to
start back all the way from the beginning. Before I start spinning tales I
would like to provide a background into the work that I do here. I am currently
working for a graduate student from the University of Kentucky whose thesis is
concerning the roost selection of the Northern long-eared bat throughout the
year. The Northern long-eared bat was listed as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act only a few months ago. There is knowledge of the habitats used by
these bats during the summer when they are giving birth and raising their young
(approximately May 15 – August 5). The time after August 15 until the bats go
into hibernation however is still largely a mystery. We are capturing Northern
long-eared bats using mist nets and harp traps and outfitting them with tiny
radio transmitters so that we can follow them after we release them. We are
then tracking these bats to determine what kinds of habitats they are using. This
information may be used in the future to help protect the habitat types we find
them to be using in order to protect the future of the species. A little
sciency and pretty geeky but it’s exciting work to me.
I don’t want to leave a novel as my
first blog post back in action so I will just share a few stories from my fist
two days of work for now. As a I said I am living inside Mammoth Cave National
Park and little did I know that they have a 3 car ferry that you have to take across
the Green River in order to get to where I am living or drive an hour around
out of your way to use the nearest bridge. This ferry runs from 6:00 Am until
9:55 Pm. Anyone who knows me knows that punctuality is not always my strongest
suite. Well the first night I got a little lost between Lexington Kentucky
where I had to fill out my employment paperwork and the park. Driving at night
not really knowing where I am going and just hoping that I find it before the
ferry leaves was quite the adventure and in true Tyler style at 9:51 I pulled
my car onto the ferry with a huge sigh of relief.
I thought that barely catching the
ferry was just me getting the first day jitters out of the system but
apparently there was one more trick up the parks sleeve for me. As I entered
the park I saw a coyote cross the road and a bat fly over my car which I took
to be great signs of welcoming me to my new home. When working with and handling
any kind of wildlife you do everything within your power to make sure that you
do not inflict pain or kill any of the animals. This summer I have spent 4 months
handling easily over a hundred individual bats without any injury and I can
still say I have not harmed any while handling them. This being said a poor red
bat decided to dive bomb the grill of my car on my way into the park my first
night. I didn’t realize this until the next day when I found it dead in the
grill of my car with my new boss that I just met standing right next to me.
Needless to say I kind of freaked out that I had just killed the exact creature
that I handle on a regular basis. My boss tried to reassure me that it happens
sometimes and I took this as her just being nice and doubted its truth. We
bagged it and took it to one of the national park natural resources professionals
so that they could take samples from the bat. As soon as he saw the bat he said
“Another grilled bat?” so I didn’t feel quite as bad knowing that the bats in
the park have a history of doing this and it wasn’t just me. Still quite the
omen so star the season. Despite this omen though I was not the first person at
this job to have to go to urgent care or the emergency room as I was at the
last job. The first night of work one of my new coworkers managed to cut
himself to the bone with an extremely sharp knife while tearing down a harp
trap. I am glad to report though that a few stitches and antibiotics later he
is as good as new.
Well this is probably more than
anyone wants to read in one sitting so I will stop here but I carry a large
antennae when tracking the bats and have heard people whisper all kinds of
things and even flat out ask us if we are ghost hunters, if we are searching
for cell phone service, tracking bears through the caves, trying to find t.v.
signal and even had one homeowner think we wanted to look at her trees to make
baseball bats out of them so I hope this clears up a little what I do when I am
working with the creatures of the night.
