Batty

Batty
With Halloween and its striking paraphernalia looming on the horizon, the preference for everything sugarcoated interjects with a supernatural lip-smacking bite.

The weather's crisp nip along with the overshadowing and pervading darkness, add characteristic zeal to frightened frosty breaths delighting in the faux haunted depictions.

This festive and ghastly holiday is replete with creepy iconic images and monsters to perk up the blandest and most sedate places imparting fun and spine-chilling frolicking.

Wicked witches, green goblins and ghouls, ghosts, and the Dracula hysteria that had people protecting their pulsating necks by superstitiously donning garlic as a repellent all have their place in the mystifying annals of spells, potions, and amulets.

Then there are the exemplary Halloween animals relegated to the stereotypical spooky species sector: arachnids and their sticky entangling webs, shape-shifting werewolves, mischievous black cats, and blood-sucking bats each mythologically clawed into the annual horrorfest.

Sometimes, fantasy conceals accuracy beneath howling archetypes and skillful costume fabrication, rendering the truth far more dreadful than the employed legendary scare tactics.

How did innocent and helpful bats acquire rank into this sinister category?

It likely has roots in their nocturnal ventures, dwelling in underground caves, sleeping upside down from eaves, webbed wings, sharp pointed teeth, and blood sucking tendencies.

Admittedly, that's a great deal to overlook by a mere mortal whose imagination races and easily succumbs.

However, the truth often requires some digging and rational thinking.

Bats are pollinators and ultimately heroes that keep various ecosystems and agricultural crops intact and pest free by feasting on rodents and gobbling up over one thousand insects per hour including disease carrying mosquitoes.

That alone should have them revered and applauded, not feared.

Out of thirteen hundred species of these flying mammals, only about three are sanguineous, and they seek birds, goats, and cattle, not humans which is one less thing to worry about if you stroll in forests at night.

Alarmingly, bats in North America are on the decline mostly due to a devastating fungal infection called white-nose syndrome, killing millions in the past few decades, particularly those that hibernate in caves.

The significant reduction of this natural stabilizing agent for vegetation and biospheres unfavorably gives farmers the green light to compensate by substituting with a heavier toxic pesticide (31%) load.

When the normal native barriers are broken down, the effects are often noted in diverse and surprising places and often with catastrophic repercussions.

Studies have admonished since 2006 that human infant mortality rates have increased with the arrival of white-nose syndrome and its boosted artificial pesticide applications dousing millions of acres of crops.

Because we are part of a delicate and intricate web of life that is interdependent upon livelihood, balance, and wellness, it is imperative that we reconcile and restore any disturbances in this viable life sustaining network of organisms and species.

Even with countless reports warning about excessive pesticide use, man's refusal and inability to find safer methods for farming remains resolutely uncompromising, jeopardizing various biomes and youth.

This resistance makes no sense cognitively but plenty financially for chemical companies.

Centuries ago, bats resided in the steepled belfries of abandoned churches, which were the highest point and contained the bells that rang to remind and gather the faithful congregation.

Somewhere along the way, 'bats in the belfry' morphed into an entirely different interpretation with its telltale colloquialism of someone being 'batty' or irrational.

'Bats in the belfry' may indicate madness or eccentricity, but the real confusion and lunacy seem to be with mankind's untoward behavior for his fellow man and the creatures that God placed on His Earth.

Eerily, this archaic adage rings with steadfast veracity regarding vacated belfries and disordered ecosystems leading to man's very demise.

Of all the menacing and macabre components of Halloween, this is undoubtedly the scariest.

Bat conservation is imperative; please help however you can.

Let's rectify what we can before the option no longer exists and we will be bat-less yet completely batty.

Have a Happy and safe Halloween!

~"Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow,"" Isaiah 1:17 ~
HEaling Link® will meet Tuesday, October 15, 2024, at 7:30pm via Zoom. For more information, please contact Jackie: HEalingLink03@gmail.com Isn't it time to get Linked?