Bats in Trouble Read online

  “We have something even better,” Shilo said.

  Cricket carefully set the garbage bag into the back of the truck. “Something nobody’s ever seen before—at least, not at a parade.” She reached into the truck for a roll of black tape and two pieces of plastic she had cut from black garbage bags. It all matched Tyler’s black shirt and shorts. “Are you ready?”

  “I don’t think you paid me with enough cookies,” he grumbled as Cricket put the finishing touches on his costume. When she was done, he climbed up into the back of the truck, where Grandpa had stacked hay bales for him to lean on. He would be able to stand up safely while the truck was moving.

  “Just think of all the lives you’ll save,” Shilo said as she tossed him a pair of black gloves and a knitted black cap.

  Grandpa McKay joined the girls and grinned up at Tyler. “Everybody ready? Tyler, do you need help attaching the pinwheel?”

  “The what?” Cricket looked at Tyler in surprise.

  “It’s a turbine, Grandpa.” Tyler lifted a tall wooden structure from the back of the truck. The whirligig from the farm’s old windmill was nailed at the top, and the entire thing was painted white. “It’s not perfect, but—”

  “It’s great!” the girls exclaimed.

  “Well, good, ’cause it was pretty tricky climbing up to get this thing off the windmill.” Tyler strapped the structure to the truck with a bungee cord.

  “And it will be just as tricky putting it back,” Grandpa said. “Don’t forget these, girls.” He reached into the truck for two large signs.

  “The one with the bat on it is mine,” Shilo said reaching for the bright yellow sign that read Bats Migrate Here!

  Grandpa handed Cricket the second sign. “I like your slogan. No Wind—No Spin should get people thinking.” He turned and climbed into the truck as the mayor’s convertible started to rumble.

  The parade organizer’s voice squawked over a loudspeaker. “It’s showtime!”

  A loud cheer went up, and the parade began to surge forward.

  Chapter Ten

  “Quick, Tyler, pass us some bats!”

  Tyler opened the garbage bag and carefully passed a handful of colorful origami bats to the girls. “I still think candy would be better,” he said. He rolled down his ski mask so all that showed were his eyes and mouth. He pulled on the black gloves. “I look like I’m ready for a blizzard, but that’s okay—this way no one will recognize me.”

  Grandpa McKay drove into position behind the marching band and began to creep along the parade route. Little kids sat on the curb, chattering with excitement. Grandparents sat in lawn chairs on the sidewalk, and older kids and adults stood behind them. Police cruisers blocked the side streets, and Cricket spotted her grandmother sitting with her friends in lawn chairs in front of the café.

  “It’s kind of loud here,” Shilo said as the band started to play.

  “Yeah, but I’d rather follow the band than a bunch of horses,” Cricket said. “At least we don’t have to jump over horse poop.”

  Shilo laughed. She spotted a group of little kids on the curb. “Do you guys like bats?” she called.

  The kids stared at her. “Bats? They’re creepy.”

  “How about these bats?” Shilo handed each of them an origami bat and showed them how to squeeze the body to make the wings flap.

  “Cool!”

  “Hey, look! There’s a giant bat!” One of the kids pointed to Grandpa McKay’s truck. Tyler stretched his arms out and pretended to swoop. The black plastic opened up under his arms like bat wings. The windmill was spinning beside him. Cricket, Shilo and Tyler had the crowd’s full attention.

  A little girl in pink shorts ran up to Cricket. “Can I have a bat too, please?”

  “What does No Wind—No Spin mean?” someone asked.

  “Do you mean the turbines?” another person asked.

  Cricket nodded. She looked over and saw Shilo talking to a group of people and pointing at Tyler, who swooped and flapped in the back of the truck. They had people’s attention—but would that be enough?

  As they neared the end of the parade route, Cricket and Shilo dug out the last few handfuls of origami bats. A man carrying a large camera approached the truck and walked alongside, talking to Grandpa McKay. He wore a badge that said Pincher Creek Echo.

  “He’s from the newspaper, Cricket,” Shilo said. “You should go talk to him.”

  Cricket’s eyes widened, and her heart thumped. This was her chance to tell even more people about the bat migration. Grandpa waved her over.

  “Cricket, this is Mr. Nelson. He’s got some questions about your signs, and I thought you could explain the problem better than I could,” he said, then winked. “I think he wants a few pictures of Tyler too.”

  The reporter had no idea that thousands of bats were migrating through Pincher Creek. He nodded and took notes as Cricket explained where the bats were going and how dangerous the wind turbines were. He frowned when she told him about the dead bats they had found.

  “So Cricket, what do you think should be done about this?” he asked.

  “We need the power, but we need the bats too,” Cricket said. “If the power company stopped the turbines on the nights when there is no wind, the bats could pass through more safely. It’s only for a few weeks, while they’re migrating.”

  Mr. Nelson nodded.

  “But we don’t know how to get their attention. We’re hoping some of these people will help.”

  “I’ll get the power company’s side of the story, and we’ll see what they think of your idea. It sounds pretty simple.” He handed Cricket a business card. “You can check out photos of the parade—they’re already online.” Mr. Nelson tapped his phone, and the newspaper website popped up. He scrolled down to a photo of Tyler, midswoop. The caption underneath read “Bat-boy” Tyler McKay shows that wind turbines and bats don’t mix.

  Cricket grinned. Tyler was right—they hadn’t paid him nearly enough cookies.

  Chapter Eleven

  Questions about the bats didn’t stop when the parade ended. Everywhere they went that afternoon, the kids were asked about bats. The owner of the corner store quizzed them as he scooped their ice cream. In the bookstore and at the diner, people wanted to talk about bats. Even a policeman pulled over to the curb to ask questions. It was funny to hear Shilo explain that bats don’t attack people.

  “I’m tired of talking,” Cricket said as she settled into the truck.

  “It’s amazing how many people think bats are dangerous,” Shilo said, shaking her head.

  “Yeah, or how many people have never even seen a bat.”

  “It’s even more amazing how many people recognized me in that crazy bat costume,” Tyler said.

  Cricket and Shilo looked at each other and laughed. “It’s not really that amazing. Grandma, can I borrow your phone?”

  Tyler groaned when he saw the photo. He scrolled down. “Hey, Cricket, did you see this?”

  The newspaper had posted pictures of real bats and the wind turbines. Mr. Nelson had written an article about the girls and their concern about the danger to the bats during their migration.

  “There’s a picture of Ms. Lee,” Shilo said. “Did you know she’s an engineer? She says the power company is going to do a study of the wind turbines and bat mortality.”

  Cricket frowned. A study could take months or years. The migration was happening right now, and the bats needed help right away.

  When they got home Tyler checked the newspaper’s website again. More than three hundred people had looked at the article.

  “Lots of people are making comments. They want the power company to turn the turbines off so the bats can migrate safely,” Tyler said.

  Shilo looked over his shoulder. “Hey, look at this one, Cricket. Someone wants our instructions for making origami bats.”

  “And Ms. Lee answered your email! She says she will take your suggestion into consideration, whatever that means.”
r />   “It means you got them thinking,” Grandpa McKay said. “I would say your plan was a success.”

  Tyler and Shilo nodded, but Cricket sighed and looked out the kitchen window. Wispy clouds slipped across the sky. Sunflowers nodded their heads in the breeze. By the time the sun went down, the evening would be clear and still—a perfect night for migrating bats.

  After dinner Cricket and Shilo tossed their flashlights into a backpack and headed out the back door. Cooper yipped and spun in circles, then took off into the field.

  Shilo laughed. “How does he know where we’re going?”

  “Probably the same way I do,” Tyler said as he walked around the corner of the garage. “Can I come with you? I brought snacks.”

  Cricket rolled her eyes and Shilo laughed.

  “Sure,” Shilo said. “You can help scare away the coyotes.”

  As they crossed the field Cooper zigzagged, looking for ground squirrels. The sky was deepening to a dark blue, but the full moon was rising quickly. The clumps of trees near the hay shed were ink-black shadows. Not a leaf was moving. Cricket was worried.

  If our plan had really been a success, she thought, the power company would have agreed to stop the turbines right away. Suddenly a dark cloud erupted from under the eaves of the shed and flew up into the night.

  Shilo squeaked. “Did you see that? Did you see all those bats?”

  “That was so cool!” Tyler said. “There must have been hundreds of them.”

  Cricket nodded. She had a knot in the pit of her stomach.

  “Don’t worry, Cricket,” Tyler said. “Those bats will be safe. Grandpa told me little brown bats don’t fly high enough to be killed by the turbines. They’re hunting bugs that are closer to the ground.”

  “That must be why we didn’t find any of them under the turbines,” Cricket said as they followed Cooper around the trees. “It’s just the hoary bats that are being killed.”

  “Not tonight!” Shilo said. She pointed at the turbine. It stood like a ghost in the night sky, tall and white and…completely still! The blades of the turbine weren’t turning.

  The kids cheered.

  “They did it! They stopped the turbines!”

  “We did it!”

  All the turbines that marched across the hills beyond the farm stood perfectly still. Cricket smiled and high-fived Shilo and Tyler. The ball of worry in her stomach melted away. The kids hurried to the spot where they had stargazed a few nights earlier, tossed their backpacks and laid down on the grass. Cooper collapsed beside Cricket and rested his chin on her leg.

  “Do you need a flashlight, Shilo?” Cricket asked.

  “Not tonight. The moon’s so bright, I almost need sunglasses.”

  “There! I see one!” Tyler pointed directly overheard. “And another one!”

  Cricket craned her neck, searching the sky. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

  “You have to look straight up,” Tyler said.

  And then she saw them, small black creatures darting across the sky, all heading in the same direction. She couldn’t hear the bats making any noise, but Cooper’s ears twitched back and forth. Cricket started counting them, then gave up. There were just too many bats!

  “Good thing Ms. Lee stopped the turbines tonight,” Shilo said. “Do you think she’ll do it again?”

  “A lot of people like our idea,” Cricket said. “And when the power company does their study, they’ll find out we were right.”

  “We could write letters and start a petition too, like we did for the salamanders,” Shilo said.

  Cricket smiled as she watched the bats overhead, on their way to Mexico or Guatemala, or whatever warm country they visited for the winter. By next year their migration through southern Alberta would be safer.

  Epilogue

  Not a lot is known about bat migration, but bats appear to fly along the same windy corridors that are the best locations for wind farms. Some bats are killed when they run into the blades of the turbine, but more are killed when they fly through the zone of low pressure created by the spinning blades. The low pressure causes the air in their lungs to expand so rapidly that internal organs are damaged. Scientists don’t know why bats fly close to wind turbines. It could be because their echolocation can detect solid objects but not low-pressure zones, or perhaps because the turbines are four times taller than windmills were and are now in the bats’ flyway. Some scientists even suggest that bats are attracted to the turbines because they appear to be large trees.

  In 2005 scientists at Summerview wind farm near Pincher Creek, Alberta, discovered a way to save the lives of some migrating bats. As a test, the power company TransAlta stopped the turbines when wind was low in the fall, during the migratory season. Scientists found 50 percent fewer dead bats near the base of those turbines.

  Why should we spend so much time and money studying an animal many people fear? Bats are the only flying mammal and—most important—the only nocturnal flying insectivore, which means bats are the only insect-eating mammals that fly at night. One bat can eat three thousand insects a night! Bats help to control agricultural pests naturally by eating the insects that could destroy farm crops. Without bats, we might rely more on chemicals that are harmful to the environment and the animals and people living there. Without bats, the ecological balance would be upset, and the insect population could explode. We may not see bats very often, but we would quickly notice if they were gone.

  Pamela McDowell’s first career was in education, teaching junior high and high school. She has written more than forty nonfiction books for children. Pamela grew up in Alberta and enjoys writing about the diverse animals and habitats of her home province. Pamela lives in Calgary, Alberta, with her husband, two kids and an Australian shepherd. For more information, visit www.pamelamcdowell.ca.