Bats

Yesterday bats made it to our "what do we do about this?" list.

I was working in the attic with my son Jacob finishing an old job of putting up insulation. This was after finally getting around to putting screens on the attic windows. As we were stapling the insulation onto the rafters we seemed to have disturbed some bats that had taken up residence. Off went the screens and luckily the bats flew out. What we didn't know was whether there were more there or whether there were dependent young there. If we put the screens back up any bats inside would die.  I read that the young, who are born in June, are usually fully functional by August. We decided to leave the screens off until evening, when they ought to have gone out. It was the best I could think to do.

Later that evening we found another flying around our zendo. It probably got downstairs sometime when the attic door was open. We got the screens off the windows and got all the windows open. It wasn't so easy, but the bat finally figured out how to get out.

Still I kept thinking about whether there were others up there stuck. Today, almost a week later, there was a pretty weakened bat on the attic floor. Catherine and I were able to coax it into a box and get it outside. We put the box atop a bird bath, hoping it could get to some water. It then curled up in the back of the box. I was a bit pessimistic about it's chances.

Life and death is one of the constants out here. Our cat brought us a special catch the other day: a rabbit. While Peter Rabbit's father ended up in Mr. McGregor's stew pot this one, nameless (as if rabbits in the wild need names), got a simple burial and the Dai Shin Dharani. Every time we go into town we pass road kill, usually raccoons or possums, but once a deer. Tuesday night I almost ran over an opossum. I'm beginning to get life and death, which is to say that while it's not easy to accept in its raw form, I'm learning how to see that it is a natural state of affairs. As Catherine says in one of our meal verses "turned in the wheel of living and dying"; well I'm seeing that wheel turn again and again and am increasingly seeing that there is no separation between life and death.

Morning end note: the bat left the box in the night and hopefully got its fill of 500-1000 mosquitoes.