Even if you’re not an October baseball fan, ya gotta love those mighty bats

The Winehiker takes a step, not up to the plate, but onto the soapbox.

Did you know that four hundred fifty cash crops around the world depend on bats for pollination and/or seed dispersal?

California boasts at least 20 species of insect-eating bats, including this Pallid Bat. Ain’t she cute? Photo courtesy of californiabats.com

It’s OK, folks - I didn’t know that important little piece of trivia either. But I learned a lot last night about our friends from the Chiroptera family from Ms. Monique Lee, a member of the California Bat Conservation Fund and a dedicated rehabilitator of local bats who have been injured and subsequently rescued.

I learned of Ms. Lee’s upcoming presentation from Joe Gargiulo who runs JAG Public Relations, a Sonoma County firm that specializes in building brands in the wine industry. One of Joe’s clients is Cinnabar Winery which, if you’ve been subscribing to this Winehiker Witiculture blog for a stretch, you know has been the topic of a couple of previous posts. But lately Cinnabar Winery, led by General Manager Suzanne Frontz and the equally engaging Tasting Room Diva, Carol Lynn Shoaff, has embarked on a series of monthly wine education programs which they bill as Alchemy Tuesdays (named after their wine club) that introduces their club members to a variety of topics that cover wine, the arts, and popular culture. Last night’s presentation was the second in the series.

But bats? For heaven’s sake, why?? Answer: Because it’s not just about the wine.

At any rate, I was immediately interested, so I showed up. After all, I remain attracted by the notion that there are others besides me who wish to meld a passion for wine with a passion for the natural world. We may think - some of us - that we live in the world of wine. Or what-all. But we all should realize - must know - that when we step back for a moment, it is the natural world that remains: ever-present, living, breathing, beckoning, whether there’s a wineglass in hand or a computer keyboard. And, when learning is a key part of the mix, I tend to know this about myself: I reach for my credit card. Or my boots and rucksack.

I was already aware that bats play an important role in our ecosystem, as well as our cultural heritage. Heck, there’ve been some nights I’ve had them swirling around my head and reveled in it. Yet in this day and age, Science being the relentless fact-finder that it collectively is, the diametric juxtaposition between our heritage and our recent learnings about bats is rather astonishing. Ms. Lee, and others of her ilk, are actively endeavoring to put forth the notion that superstition - though a big part of our human past - runs opposite to what we’ve learned about bats in recent years. Bats may be ugly (though some would say cute about some species) and they only come out at night, but neither these kinds of pronouncements - nor exploitative Hollywood schlock films - make them bad. Or evil.

In fact without bats, we’d be slapping on the insect repellent every hour of our lives.

And so why do we spray pesticides to eliminate medflies, light-brown apple moths and glassy-winged sharpshooters - and therefore unnaturally eliminate bat forage - when each one of us could build a bat house? Why, for Earth’s sake, do we even live in a society that disallows such structures? (I direct this particular lament to the management/owners of the community [or lack thereof] in which I live, a place that does not allow the planting of trees.) After all, those mighty insect-eating bats (known by bat people as microbats, a different genus than those larger fruit-eating bats) can eat their body weight or more in insects in just one night’s foraging.

But people, ya gotta know: bats, as a collective family of winged creatures - insect-eating or otherwise - are dying off in droves.

Why do you suppose that is? I suspect you already know the answer.

Yes: it is us. We humans. We spray our toxins, doze our natural sanctuaries, dance the fupped duck through our Garden of Eden, and we gleefully do it with a healthy dose of blind (a) ambition (b) superstition, or (c) ignorance [are they the same thing?] because it has to be done to keep the economy and the growth-for-the-sake-of-growth ideal going. Malthus be damned!

And, quite naturally, of course, another piece of Paradise becomes hopelessly, wantonly, irrevocably, Lost for the sake of almighty Progress.

I can’t speak for much of mankind, but I think the little buggers are kinda cute. However, I’m biased, you see: I know that bats don’t deserve the negative attitudes we, as humans, have accorded them over untold centuries. Could our superstitions be behind why bats are, within recent years, risking major habitat loss? C’mon, people:

Bats. Are. Good. Damnit!

And we need them! And so I admire the work of such people as Monique Lee, who regularly presents her bat-speak to schoolchildren and adults alike in an effort to put forth the notion that not only are bats cool for school, they perform an extremely vital role in preserving the natural balance of the environment, our environment, our global landscape, our very lives.

Stepping off the soapbox now. For a little while. Until the next rant.

Alchemy Tuesdays are An Evening of Wine, Conversation and Fun in Saratoga Village on the second Tuesday of each month from 7:30 to 9:00 pm. $10 per person online includes wine and cheese tasting; price is $12 at the door. The Cinnabar Winery Tasting Room is located at 14612 Big Basin Way in Saratoga, California. I recommend attending.

~winehiker

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 10:16 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.