79 Degrees, breezy
The weather today is such a welcome relief. All creatures on Prairie Fire Farm appreciate a warm, not hot and breezy day.

I wanted to mention another issue happening here on the farm. Our bats seem to be dying in large numbers, and we have no idea what is the cause. We haven't sprayed anything, nor changed anything except put up some hay in the barn. Like every good old structure, we have had a resident population of bats here. We welcome them for the bug eating service they perform!

But this year, starting back in about June, we started running across dead bats on the ground. The first bat or two, we didn't think too much of it. Then we started noticing that we were finding as many as 3 or 4 in a week. One near the garage, several under an ash tree, one in the barn, more just in different places on the lawn. Many of these dead bats were really dried out, which seemed odd. Dessicated like they had been dead a long time, but we are pretty sure we found them within 24-48 hours since we regularly walk by, etc.

We have made calls to our local bat conserve folks and the DNR, but haven't heard much back that is at all helpful. DNR suggested in a letter it may be heat related, but I am a little skeptical of that. It always gets hot in Wisconsin in summer, and if it were the heat, wouldn't everyone be seeing these bats dying everywhere? I am very in touch with local bat calls, so I have a very good idea about whether this is going on in other places. I know of one other place - a house in Madison - that is seeing extraordianary die-off. Karen has been corresponding with the DNR, and we would love to help out with becoming part of a monitoring program.

The world's bats perform such a very vital function on our planet. Imagine the devastation caused by a million-fold increase in the number of insect pests. More pesticide use, which poisons more insect-eating animals causing a horrible destructive spiral is one very ominous and obvious result. Here is a link to a short article outlining a crisis in bat health across the country:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/60482932.html

This issue has us very concerned. This is real, and it is a wake-up call that the scales of nature are getting really unbalanced.

Here is a link to a local bat conservation group, they have LOTS of great info on their website about how to set up bat houses, what to do with bats in the house, identification of bats, etc.

www.batcow.org