Ohmerryoutdoors

Dear America,

I didn’t know you by name, but I loved you. You’re the only place in the world I could have lived. I’m called the Indiana bat, after a state right in your heart.

There were once a lot of us. We were a friend to humanity. We ate the things that destroyed your crops and made you itch and gave you diseases. We thrived in your old hardwood forests and your deepest, most secret caves.

Then you came with your poisons, and your machines, and your cities. Our forests were turned to towns and our caves were turned to mines and tours, and our foods disappeared quietly. By 1967, we were already endangered. In the last ten years, more than half of us vanished.

My mother nursed me in the highest branches of some of the last safe forests in Tennesssee. Last winter, I hibernated in a protected cave, one of just seven in the state where are able to rest. I was a success. People who loved me helped protect me. That’s a beautiful thing that America does.

A few nights ago, I was finding food with my ears. I can do that because they’re so sensitive. I can hear everything. I made the tiniest clicks and let their echoes show me every moth, every gnat, every mosquito. It was a clear night. A safe night.

Then the explosions started. They were so strong they flung me through the air. My eardrums burst. I smelled fire and smoke. I tumbled to the ground unconscious and landed on my wing. My bones burst right through my sensitive skin and cracked. The pain was terrible.

I woke up screaming in pain. I wanted the pain to stop. A predator picked me up and I was ready to be eaten but it didn’t eat me. It put me into a quiet place. I heard voices and whispers. Then I was moving. Then I was in a new place entirely.

Something smelled strange, but before I could wonder what it was, I fell asleep. They made sure I felt nothing when the needle went into me. My suffering was over.

I didn’t know I was special, but after I was gone, they celebrated me. They measured me, and weighed me, and took precise pictures of everything. They talked about the hairs on my toes and the length of my bones and the color of my lips. They looked for the traits that made special, talked about whether I had the keel, whether I had the notch.

I didn’t know I was special, but I was, because I may be one of the very last of my kind. And you, the person reading this, may be one of the last generations to share a planet with us.

America, I don’t want to stop you from celebrating. You’re earthlings too and we share this planet together and I have no opinions about politics or city ordinances or what the fireworks mean. But I wish you had celebrated your birthday in a way that didn’t kill me.

I wish I could be out tonight, in the warm air, hearing the crickets and the cicadas.

I wish we had been able to coexist.