A few of us were playing music at the Newtown Square Friends
Meeting House last night. It was a perfect summer night, not too hot,
a nice breeze, and a sliver of a moon. Such a nice night in
fact that we decided to play outside, and so we carried the porch
benches out into the cemetery and set up on the other side of the wall near the
porch.
As it got darker, with a bright slice of moon, we heard
high pitched chattering inside the porch roof. And then one bat flew out, and
another, and another, and then in twos, and threes. We were ten feet away - and
when they came out - through a small crack between the porch roof and the stone
meeting house, they would swoop down, within a few feet of my head, before
rising and flying off. I was at the end of the bench nearest the flight path.
At time I put up my guitar in front of my face - purely defensive - because I
still have those childhood stories in mind about bats getting in to your hair.
I know they can turn on a dime - but perhaps one might be
thinking of something else, a fight with his spouse, worried about his kids,
and BAP - in a moment of inattention, he runs right into my head. You never know. So I
cowered behind my guitar and watched them come out and then soar off.
We continued to play, and they continued to trickle out over
the next 30 minutes - perhaps a hundred in all. They didn't bother us; we
didn't bother them. It actually was not too buggy out - I guess we have them to
thank for that. Fireflies lit up the cemetery. Several cats were running about
- we would see them darting and stalking between the gravestones. A fox was
making noise in the back, on the other side of the cemetery wall. At one point
a human form, in white, walked along the wall at the road near where the old
crypt used to be. And the bats, out in the night sky, continued to wheel
overhead.
There was a lot of life in the old cemetery last night!
