by Amanda Bybee
“There are enough bugs here for all winter!” said Bebe after Batina described what she’d found. “But they’re stuck in this nasty jam.”
“What can we do about this, girls?” asked Lady Bat.
“We can boil them in a soup,” said Batina. “And we can make jam.”
“We can boil them and then toss the water...” began Bebe. “I mean Batina can use the disinfected, boiled fruit water to…”
“Batina can?” asked Lady Bat.
“I mean, we can make syrup, or freeze fruit broth for meals together,” said Bebe.
This was when Bebe finally apologized for her tormenting.
“Hey, Batty, I’m sorry for complaining about you. I’m just used to having my own space. I’m glad you’re staying with us here so we can become better sisters,” Bebe said.
So, for a time, the cave was a safer environment for Batina than alone in her tree.
The Bat Colony
The bat trio, with their unconventional family of cross-species, subsisted mostly on flies and apples throughout the winter. Many of the leftover fly meals Lady Bat and Bebe ate had become infused with fruit juice, and much of the jam and sauces that Batina ate were laced with fly parts. Their mixed diet was a big challenge for everyone to swallow.
The sisters continued to be home-schooled, learning about life beyond the cave, generally in peace for a good part of a year. Sacrificing edible food for Batina’s safety, Bebe continued to tolerate Batina’s occasional messiness, and she did get more privacy with Batina working in the kitchen instead of taking over their bedcave.
Batina was acquiring much better listening skills, unable to make out anything in the constant darkness of their cave. Before she had always flown outside in darkness, when her eyes would adapt to wherever she would find light. But in the still of day, Batina, being still a teenager, could not be trusted outside for anything more than a quick errand, if that, while the family mostly was sleeping. But Lady Bat knew of other reasons why the girls should not be out at day, and kept them safe in the cave with her.
But it took a while to get there. With Bebe’s ups and downs, her mom, the First Lady of the Cave - with no other elders- had very little control over such resentful behavior. For the first time since her dad’s departure she began to question their lifestyle.
“Why do we live alone?” she first asked. And afterwards, “why did dad leave us?” she asked her mom one afternoon when Batina was fast asleep.
Lady Bat was prepared for this day to arrive, when Bebe would finally ask questions about their traumatic past.
“After you were born our colony was overrun with another in search of shelter. We lived with thirty other bats for two years, until the walls caved in from an explosion. Your dad and I took off with you under my wings, landing here. We were never meant to live in isolation. But then I grew to enjoy myself and I had you to influence.
The invading colony of fruit bats had sight, but they had trouble at first in our dark cave, until they learned to catch fireflies to light their way. After we insect bats had eaten most of the fireflies, unable to distinguish their glow from the other insects, the invaders felt they lost control needing to see things laid out before them in the conventional, sighted way. When their fires would not stay lit in the damp cave, they tried to light headlamps. But some of their fur styling products were flammable and caused the explosion that killed many. But gracious fruit bat couple, whose names I’ve never known, for whom I am eternally grateful, flew us out here before they set out to the forest with their colony. Your dad left for other mates, like most bat dads do, after he knew we were safe.”
Lady Bat wanted to think the last part was true, about Bebe’s dad, but he hadn’t given any warning the morning he never came home and Lady had heard something strange very late in the day when he left. It wasn’t the swoosh or hoot of the familiar predators she’d heard. Instead it was the tinny voices of humans wandering in the day. The next sound she heard was her mate’s squeaking cries. Bebe must have heard them too, but she had chosen to forget she ever did after she and her mom switched once again to survival mode, willing that everything would have to be okay. The truth was that her dad was currently safer than they were. But they did know this yet. They missed their loved one who was gone.
It was not a stretch for Lady Bat to wonder if the same fate had claimed members of Batina’s colony. Could they have been snatched by humans too? It had been a year since Batina had mysteriously fallen from the tree off of the overhanging bough above their cave.
Where the missing bats were, Lady had no knowledge of. They were given a new life in the zoo. The bats collected from their habitat were to become protected, so that their predators, birds such as owls and hawks, could not send them into extinction. Zoos ensured a species food and shelter, within a safely monitored environment, meant to replicate the native habitat of the endangered animal. Here species could be selectively bred and sheltered for their own preservation.
It would take some acclimating on the part of the captive bats, but their survival rates would be higher than those left behind in the colony. The members left behind wouldn’t know there could be an alternative to starvation, drought, loss of habitat, or food chain order. The randomly chosen colony mates who would come to live in glass structures would have their own limitations. But they all would adapt to change, as wildlife does with its natural selection.
The next winter Batina was faced with the same dilemma, the scarcity of fruit. The family made due in the same way sharing what they had for the good of all. But their health was getting worse from eating parts of the foods their bodies weren’t meant to digest. All three bats had lost weight that winter.
It had been Bebe that heard the familiar tinny voices from outside, which were impossible to tune out, after the sound memory of her dad’s final squeal, instantly came back to her. And then Batina saw the giant eyeballs looking into the cave. She’d never seen humans and was more than spooked. So were Bebe and Lady Bat haunted hearing themselves mentioned as “the others,” right before the humans reached in to collect them with their nets.
The last thing they ever could have expected of their destiny would have been a reunion, but that’s what it was.
They left in the light of day falling upon them as birds cried their morning drills. They were taken to a strange world where animals lived within barrier fences, or between glass walls eating surprisingly to their heart’s content. Batina was escorted to the encased fruit bat tree branch hut where she saw her parents, who swept her to their wooly chests with outstretched rubbery wings, folding her in tightly to their pulsating hearts. Lady Bat recognized the identifiable shrieks of the fruit bat pair who happened to have escorted Lady Bat and her family to their cave. Lady Bat, with her original trio along with several new members, would be placed in echoing glass chambered quarters and given more tools to school herself and her family with than they had ever known.
Bebe’s dad squealed loudly a triumphant sound, to have his family - Lady Bat and Bebe - back with him, as he wrapped them securely under each of his wings.
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Preview One: ZOOFARI
(a Young Adult novel for all ages)
Chapter 1: The Petting Zoo
Rachel had to wait with her younger brother at the petting zoo for their mom to come from work and get him at break time. She’d stand sulking, rolling her dark eyes, made-up like a raccoon, and twirling her straight, long, chocolate brown hair, until she almost got a curl, but the wet fog, being so close to the beach, dampened everything. Rachel hated the responsibility of picking up her brother, Tony, from second grade, six whole blocks from Jackson High. And having to take him to the zoo each day, after her last class, was even worse.
But the fact was, her mom couldn’t do it and there was no dad in the picture. He had split after he had learned about his son’s disability. Her dad went back to Italy where he and her mom had met. Tony had a profound hearing loss. Rachel’s mom needed so
meone trustworthy who could communicate clearly with him. She worked at Luigi’s, an Italian restaurant, owned by Luigi himself, across Sloat Avenue from the zoo. She couldn’t get away from work. Even though their mom worked all the time, they always seemed to be low on money. Rachel’s big dream was to somehow earn and save enough to go to Italy on her own to find her dad.
It was a chore for Rachel having to wait at a petting zoo, a stinky one, like taking out garbage. Her brother had been poopy enough when he was little; her mom even made her change his diapers, when he was smaller, and now she had to endure these smelly animals. The half hour would lag as Tony ran amuck in the pen with the goats, ponies, sheep, llamas and whatever else turned up. On days when she was lucky enough that Tony would consent, they could drop into to the zoo café that was located halfway between the barnyard and Africa. It was a clean hut with different animal patterns, of spots, stripes on every wall. The ceiling was painted black with tiny stars, the floor was bamboo. Rachel would get herself a latte on her mom’s tab.
Her saving grace was that she might run into Spence, the hot zoo keeper. He was six feet tall with messy black hair and had eyes that seemed to change like a mood ring from stony hazel to hurricane blue. There was something about the fact that he could literally tame large beasts. If only he could tame little ones too like Tony. This day had been exceptionally nippy, Rachel glad she could tear Tony away from the farm animals, when she saw Spence in line at the Café Zoofari for his pick-me-up.
“Hi Spence,” said Rachel down the line a few people from him.
He didn’t even notice her as he was laughing with Jaime. She noticed Jaime holding onto Spence’s arm. What did he see in Jaime? thought Rachel. Then Rachel laughed to herself. Jaime couldn’t even read the menu. Rachel thought she was rid of her when Jaime went to a different school last year. The girls had been in junior high together, back when Jaime lost her mom and was out of school for the longest month, and now they were in the same high school. Rachel felt sorry for her losing her mom so young, but Spence had flirted with Rachel before in the café.
She certainly didn’t appreciate the extra special treatment Jaime got because she was legally blind. Jaime wasn’t even blind; Rachel knew Jaime could see what was going on a lot of the time. She just couldn’t read print and that’s what made her legal. She knew all this because of her legally deaf brother, and all that was given to him. Rachel wished never to become disabled, but being able to do everything seemed – in her universe - to mean that she wasn’t able to get anything.
“Well,” Rachel said to herself aloud to Tony, “I can see that Spence is pre-occupied today and I need a pick –me-up.” She ordered herself a latte, and rushed back holding in one hand her brother’s squirming wrist, her drink in the other.
Finally, their mom came rushing Tony back to her work and off Rachel’s hands. Rachel would at least have a couple of hours to herself. Amped with caffeine, she decided to walk home to their Sunset District house. Tomorrow she wouldn’t have to deal with seeing Spence or Jaime, or any animals after school because she had her community service downtown in an office.
****
The next day found Rachel and Jaime in Biology class together. Usually Jaime had an earlier lab section with the same teacher, but her lab partner, who did the note-taking and sometimes signed the role sheet for Jaime, was absent. So today, she attended the ten o’clock class paired with Rachel. They were assigned to test their PH levels. Jaime first took a swab from her cheek with a Q-tip. This tested your chemical balance of hydrogen. The lower numbers meant the more acidic you were. The higher, the more alkaline you were with a range from 1-7.
Rachel, wearing her signature low cut bright top, fanned her chest, and asked loudly playing to the room “Is this a pheromone test?” She had recently learned that pheromones were a person’s individually unique scent. She’d also learned they were a person’s sex scent.
Rachel swabbed her cheek, dabbed the litmus paper with her saliva, and casually quizzed Jaime about Spence while the sample showed, upon comparison, that Rachel’s PH was more acidic.
“Does Spence have a girlfriend?” she asked.
“Spence? You know Spence? ....from the zoo?”
“Yeah, the hot, white African guy,” said Rachel.
“Uh, I don’t know if he has one or not.”
“Couldn’t you just find out, for me?” Rachel asked. “I’ll be your lab partner. I can check both our names off all our tests and you won’t even have to do any lab,” she pleaded. “You could meet me and Stephanie in the cafeteria. We’ll show you the ropes!” Jaime had never had an invite to hang out with Stephanie and Rachel, the two most popular girls at Jackson.
It was feeling a little stuffy for Jaime and she was wishing the class would get a move on marking this test off with the floating clipboard, so she could go. She knew they shouldn’t take that kind of advantage of their biology teacher’s experimental grading. And Science was one of her favorite subjects. But Jaime also knew that Rachel had tons of friends. Jaime was new to this high school and needed people to know she wasn’t some sort of a freak. She’d overheard a pack of lost friends calling her last year’s school the ‘Stevie Wonder School.’
“Well…I guess I could,” she relented.
Chapter 2
Even though Spence Farnsworth was only 21, he knew a thing or two about Zoology. He had finished his college Bachelor in Science Degree and was nearly done with his Master’s Degree. He had organized his work program responsibilities efficiently around his own academic needs. Spence was qualified as Jaime Needham’s supervisor during her proposed three year internship as a Giraffe Keeper at the San Francisco Zoo. She was provided additional assistance from Miss Ladow, her special district Teacher for the Visually Impaired.
“Just remember,” the basic brown-haired, amber-eyed, Miss Ladow, had told him. “Jaime is very capable and independent. And she has more experience with animals than any sophomore I had ever known of, until I learned about your teenage years in Africa!”
Jaime’s teacher and job coach was reminding Spence that Jaime’s job coach down in southern California had courageously allowed her to go out into the open lands of San Diego’s zoo to study the free-roaming animals in their one hundred acre park. The park was designed to duplicate natural environments of each select species in specific areas. There Jaime had been placed with the giraffes, at her request.
Miss Ladow explained to Spence that Jaime’s mother had been a veterinary pharmacist and that Jaime had been “up close and personal” with wildlife, as Spence had. He knew that simply feeding giraffes would not be enough for Jaime to do. She just needed to learn her role in their care giving. She would need to prove to her employers that she could be a responsible and dependable keeper. Once she proved she could keep them, they might keep her. This would most likely happen slowly over time, as they watched her progress.
Spence was impressed with Jaime’s background and with her work. He had had the chance to meet Jaime’s mother once at a convention. He thought Jaime looked just like her mother; about the same height, and the same strawberry-blonde hair, he remembered. She had been a well-known figure in naturopathic veterinary medicine, who had died in a mining excavation only a couple of years ago. It was a sad story. Tracy Needham, Jaime’s mother, had gone to South Africa to procure a 30-carat diamond, which ten years of research had proven that the magnetic properties could prevent extinction of certain species’ native to Africa. Something happened to the elevator she was in and she never made it out of the mine.
Although impressed with Jaime’s history, he still wasn’t used to walking alongside a person who couldn’t see well. And Jaime happened to be an especially physically attractive young person with long limbs, thick hair she wore in a high braid, and the kind of effortless smile that couldn’t be faked. The color of her eyes was olive green, that mysterious color usually a combination of parental genes.
She did have a noticeable eye thing; somethi
ng kind of distracting. He’d only noticed it last week when she’d turned her head to the right to speak to him, and her left eye focused forward, while her right eye looked into his eyes. It was at first surprising, but notably innocently cute and kind of sexy, like a glimpse of a crooked smile with some overlapped teeth. She seemed to have the kind of personality that could blossom into beauty once you put down your guard of limitations. He knew he really didn’t have the time to be analyzing the looks of any high school student. Though bewildering women tended to gravitate to him, he was more captured by science, specifically with expanding his knowledge of ways for better understandings to exist between people and animals.
****
Next time, I shouldn’t have Spence guide me. I can get around here fine in the daylight. It really doesn’t start getting dark until 5:30, Jaime thought. Under the half-light of an imminent storm cloud, they were walking together with Jaime holding her hand just above the bend of his elbow, away from the savanna, the size of a school yard, down the humpy pathway that led out of the Africa Region. Jaime carried her white cane folded up in her backpack in case she was outside after dark, when she would need it.
In a couple more months it would be daylight savings time, when clocks would be set forward one hour, which would mean the daylight hours would last longer. She wouldn’t have to worry about turning into a ‘blind bat,’ with a cane then. She had learned that most bats aren’t totally blind, but they naturally follow sound wave frequencies better, not only relying only on their bad vision. As a child, she would call herself the Blind Bat and pretend her cane was her magic third eye. The cane could take her all the places she’d never been before. But often there was this isolating feeling of having to pass for normal. Without the cane, people couldn’t really tell that she couldn’t see –unless she had to read something. She could usually read words or images held up close to her face, but bus numbers, street signs, and many other practical signs were meaningless with her inability to see them from a distance.