When I first heard we would be bunking with bats, I knew I was in for an adventure. None of my backpacking and outdoor campfires experiences up to this point, hadn’t involved close encounters or dual accommodations with these little critters. I had only seen them characterized on nature shows and horror films. It was difficult to predict what a night sleeping with bats might be like.
All bat species are nocturnal, right? Maybe we’d simply be passing ships in the night—us humans crawl out of bed and ready for our day just as the aforementioned little critters came in to sleep. Or, might they flit past our heads as we clutched our blankets to our faces in the darkness? As my roommates and I chatted the night away, the possibility that any bats would join our sleepover seemed unlikely. So when we finally crawled into bed, our conversation dwindled to a quiet, we noticed… and heard them… with us.
In the darkness of Surama, the sound of bat nails clasping dry palm fronds was magnified. The chittering could have been the sounds of a plotting pair of bats, or perhaps a whole feisty colony—right? And it was all going down in our bedroom, just above our pillows.
And, what would you do? One of us decisively declared that she might as well use the ear plugs she'd been lugging around, rather than lie in full awareness of the nightime sounds. She, thankfully, proceeded to unload her extra pairs on the rest of us. Taking them in my hand, I knew that the past several days of traveling had worn me down. But just before slipping the soft, pliable ear plugs in, I paused.
Could I relax enough to fall asleep with these unusual little bat sounds? I mean, it’s not like they’re going to attack you. If theyre in my bedroom, this must be a usual visitor in Guyanese roofs. So, then, they're visitors in my room too.
Little bats in our palm roof from Lily Ulmer on Vimeo.
As I listened is the dark, their sounds became more familiar and memorable. I heard a chitter and crawling, as if one little bat greeted another and asked how their loved one was feeling as they cuddled up together in the fronds. The second bat probably said something about their busy night plans before they were both interrupted by a young pup demanding yummy decorative moths or boring brown ones--either could fill up it’s little hungry bat tummy. And, as you can hear on the audio, the parents must have preceded to finish their adult bat conversation which tested the pup’s patience. The pup was probably the one who explored around the roof looking for midnight snacks. As the charming bat couple continued on into their regular waking hours, I fell asleep.
By changing my perspective, my unease turned into wonder, and what at first I was scared of became friendly and comforting. Every night when I went to bed, I looked forward to hearing the bats chittering to one another, waking up to the sound of howler monkeys calling in the new day, and getting out of bed with the macaws.
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