Have you been appreciating bats the past couple of weeks? If not there's still plenty of time. October is Bat Appreciation Month according to Bat Conservation International, which urges us to celebrate the importance to our ecosystems of those furry flying mice.
To me bats are a mixed bag. On the plus side they eat flying insects and I don't like flying insects. They are scarier than bats. On the other side of the ledger Dracula flies around as a bat and they get in your hair. The bat, that is, not Dracula. He just raises your hair.
This might be a good time to watch some old Christopher Lee movies. He is to Dracula what Basil Rathbone is to Sherlock Holmes. Mystery readers might want to read The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, the novelization of the stage play which was based loosely on Rinehart's novel The Circular Staircase, or watch one of the three movies adapted from the stage play. It's all very complicated.
I hate it when people pose as experts by spouting Wikipedia so I will admit that along with the information above it was from Wikipedia I learned that comic-book creator Bob Kane stated that the villain of The Bat Whispers (the 1930 film adaptation of The Bat) was an inspiration for his character Batman.
Now there is something I can celebrate. Batman was my favorite superhero back when comic books were badly printed and cost a dime. Unlike most superheroes he didn't possess magical powers. He depended on technological gadgetry and athletic prowess. Being more human, he was more interesting.
That Batman wasn't as grim as the modern version. He was a lighter shade of noir but still darker than other costumed crime fighters of the era. I liked the idea of a spookily attired avenger prowling dark alleys at night. I guess it appealed to something dark inside me, just as the novels of writers like Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and James M. Cain do.
Imagine my horror when I tuned in to the first episode of the Batman television series and found him portrayed as a campy buffoon! Never mind the black little corner of my personality that enjoys murder mysteries and the like, when I saw Batman busting a few awkward dance moves in a disco * I felt like I had a Thompsonesque Killer Inside Me ready to burst out!
I suppose at the time mature minds were thinking you couldn't actually depict a cartoon character seriously. Movie makers since than have proved them wrong.
Although bats are associated artistically with darkness and fear I don't find them frightening in real life. They are too much like mice with wings. At least the sort we have in the northeastern United States.
At the end of the street where Mary and I once lived there was a barn. In the evening bats would pour out into the twilight like spilled ink. On summer nights, living at the family cottage, I'd stand in the yard, in the middle of a maelstrom of swooping, diving, tumbling bats and chiropteran chirping. Hey, if I run across a new word I have to use it. They flew so close I could almost feel the draft from their wings but they never blundered into me. I found the creatures fascinating rather than frightening.
The mother of a friend of mine was terrified of bats. She didn't trust their "radar" or their intentions. Forget about the importance of bats to ecosystems, to her bats existed for no reason except to fly into her hair. Which was unfortunate since the family house had a huge attic filled with bats and they often found their way downstairs.
As soon as a winged intruder got loose in the house, my friend's mother would put her hands on top of her head and run screaming from room to room, much to the amusement of my friend and I. (Let's face it, kids find the spectacle of adults acting like children hilarious.) Not being, as we put it, "scaredy cats", let alone "yellow bellied sap suckers", we rushed to the rescue. Our method? We chased the bat with a vacuum sweeper until we were able suck it up. It might sound cruel but when we took the vacuum outside and opened it up the bat invariably flew off, apparently unscathed, and no doubt ready to return to the attic.
So there is my Bat Appreciation Month tribute to bats (without even mentioning that I liked the Bat Masterson television show). Not that I can tell you what gives Bat Conservation International the right to declare such a month. I suppose anyone can declare a month or a week or a day or anything they like. I could call today International Orphan Scrivener Day or how about Name Your Own Day Day?
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