Treks around Angelpond are quite common in months not named January or February. The walk, alone, while not long, takes a good deal of time if one attempts it with a camera. There seems to be always something begging to be captured.
In the summertime and fall some of the bluegills will also follow along, swimming from one pond edge spot to another, captivated, so it would seem, by a human circling their liquid home. It can’t be proven, but it seems every year that some of the dragonflies also follow a human presence involved in hiking the trail around Angelpond, always willing to pause a moment for a dragonfly portrait or two.
Back in 2022 when the weather was not so frightful and bitter, a photo hiking attempt allowed for the mind to expand, the head to be cleared of cobwebs, and vitamins from sunlight being absorbed by the tablespoonful. The “sunshine vitamin” D3, or rather a person’s lack of such, can ultimately lead to health issues even to the point of death.
Death. Here we are folks, getting to the, um, crux of Angelkeep Journals’ topic for this Thursday. Angelkeep has a let-live, allow-nature, hands-off, policy for wildlife and vegetation for the most part. Nature has a way of taking care of its own, and possesses a food chain that sometimes involves the larger overpowering the smaller. Consider, for instance, a great blue heron and a bluegill. Angelkeep humans fish with a catch-and-release philosophy, but not herons. No-sir-ee-bob. Herons function with their maxim, “any fish caught is sushi swallowed live and head first.”
On the farside of the direction of a particular late summer’s pond-rim-romp laid a bird. Being the first of its kind ever photographed at Angelkeep, the event of discovery proved exciting. Unfortunately the reason for the opportunity quickly became known by the lack of movement of said small brown bird. DRT. Dead right there.
No signs of a struggle, no wounds visible on either side, the carcass being handled with sticks, not fingers. Postmortem photos were taken, hoping for a later identification. This type of bird, never seen previously in flight over Angelkeep, would never fly again. Or…is there a bird Heaven?
Dead. Bat. Dead bat. The fundamentals were easily confirmable due to previous long ago hours of televised Batman and Robin. Spreading the wings of the dead bird instantly confirmed it to be a bat. The rat-like bat face also helped. This bat death never received Angelkeep Journals’ coverage, normally a given when a new variety of animal has surfaced, due to it being only discovered as a freshly deceased bat. It posed questions. Why? Who did it? How did it end there? Where did it come from? When? You know, newspaper reporter questions, but not a single answer surfaced at the scene of mortality.
Since January is predominately a dead month at Angelkeep, nothing grows, nothing blooms, and hikes are limited to feeding critters corn kernels, the thoughts of Angelkeep first ever brown dead bat resurfaced.
Look-alike photos were searched for on the internet. The unburied bat carcass disappeared, naturally, perhaps savored by a predator. A fast buzzard meal? Brown bat could not be fully identified from the photos taken. It could not be given a name. Of course it never received a cemetery marker needing a name engraved.
Friends of Ouabache State Park’s Lunch and Learn programming once had a bat expert give a very enlightening talk. Recall of that information proved too little and too late to identify Angelkeep’s brown bat. Complicating the investigation into the “suspicious” sudden death of brown bat included the internet stating there were big brown bats and little brown bats. Angelkeep “guessed” it to be a “little” variety, although Angelkeep had no larger bat for comparison.
Sometimes the internet can be remarkably non-helpful. One government site actually said, “Big brown bats are significantly larger than little brown bats.” Duh-uh. Bats’ family name is Vespertilionidae. That could have been inscribed on a small headstone had Angelkeep brown bat been buried.
As to cause of death, little brown bats feed on swarms of insects and sweep low over water for drinks to wash them down. Did Angelkeep brown bat sweep to drink and run into the pond bank tree of which it laid only 18” behind in its death pose? Maybe little brown bat collided with the tree while drinking and knocked its little brown brains out.
Don’t fly and drink, a summer lesson learned. “Duh-duh-duh-duh-Batman.”
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
