Gloria Skurzynski - Mysteries in Our National Parks - Running Scared - A Mystery in Carlsbad Caverns National Park

“Nothing to be afraid of, Sam,” Dr. Rhodes told him. “The Mexican free-tailed bats, the kind we mostly have around here, eat only bugs.” She held up a picture of a brown, fuzzy bat with hooded eyes, rounded ears, and wings folded like fans. “They’re wonderful animals. To me, they look like little gnomes. They’re mammals, you know, which means the mothers nurse their pups—that’s what the babies are called. Pups. Did you know that?”

All three kids shook their heads. “So now there are three animals I know of that have pups,” Ashley announced. “Dogs, wolves, and bats. I learned about the wolves in Yellowstone National Park.”

Jack got a mental image of a gnomelike mamma bat with her wings wrapped around a little gnome-faced pup. “How do the mothers hold them?” he asked. “I mean, they hang upside down, don’t they? How do they keep from dropping the pups?”

Dr. Rhodes answered, “It’s the babies that hold on to the mother, with their feet and their thumbs and their tiny teeth. Like you kids, little bats lose their baby teeth after a while and get grown-up teeth. When the mothers leave to get their nightly meal of insects, the baby bats hang by their toes on the walls and ceilings of the caves, packed so tightly together that there can be 400 of them in a one-square-foot area. Think of that.” Dr. Rhodes opened her desk drawer and took out a ruler. “Twelve inches on each side of a square, and 400 bat babies all squeezed together into that little space. That closeness keeps them warm, because a cave is kind of cold.” She threw the ruler back into the drawer, then held up another photo that showed bats clustered together so tightly they looked like ink blots on a gray cave ceiling.

“Wow!” Ashley exclaimed. “How do the mothers ever find their babies in all that crowd?”

“Good question, Ashley. By smell and by sound. Even though a hundred thousand pups get born in the spring, a mother can pick out her own infant—she has only one baby a year. Both mother and pup make these high-pitched sounds that people can’t hear but the bats can. It guides them to each other. That same high-frequency echolocation guides them when they go outside the cave, too. It tells them where the insects are.”

Dr. Rhodes winced a little, then reached down to pick up an empty wastebasket. After she turned it upside down, she carefully placed her left foot on top of it. An elastic bandage had been wrapped around her ankle. “A sprain,” she explained when she saw the Landons looking at it. “I tried to take a shortcut down a slippery slope, and I twisted my ankle.”

“Does it hurt?” Olivia asked. “Yes, of course it must hurt. The kids shouldn’t be taking up any more of your time, Dr. Rhodes.”

“Oh, it doesn’t hurt me that much,” she answered. “It’s fun to talk to kids; I enjoy it. Anyway, I’ll just end this little session with a few more bat facts. Like this one—bats’ knees bend backward, not forward like yours.” She pointed to Sam, whose knees were tucked under his chin. Ashley looked thoughtfully at her own knees, probably wondering how it would feel if they bent backward.

“And bats have been around for 50 million years,” Dr. Rhodes went on. “We know that from finding fossils that old. But most of all, I want you to remember that bats are intelligent creatures and tremendously useful ecologically. If there are 400,000 bats flying out of Carlsbad Cavern every night eating bugs, can you imagine how many tons of bugs that makes in a month? In a year?

That’s a tremendous help to farmers.”

“How much can each bat eat?” Jack asked.

“Considering the size of a bat, quite a lot. A nursing female will leave her baby tucked nice and warm with the other pups in the ‘bat nursery,’ then fly out into the night to eat her entire body weight—about 12 or 13 grams—in insects. Then she’ll return to her baby, nurse it again, and maybe fly out a second time in a single night to eat that many bugs all over again. Then back to her baby. She never leaves her baby for long. She’s a gentle, caring mother.”

Sam, who’d seemed fascinated by Dr. Rhodes’s lesson, suddenly looked as though he were about to cry. Maybe it was the mention of “a gentle, caring mother,” which Sam didn’t have. Steven must have noticed Sam’s sad expression too, because he stood up and said, “I guess we’d better get going. I told the kids I’d take them into the cavern. Sammy’s really anxious to see Left Hand Tunnel.”

“Left Hand Tunnel? Two different species of bats live there,” Dr. Rhodes said, “the cave myotis and the fringed myotis. Both species are quite rare. We’ve counted only 354 of the cave myotis and only 12 of the fringed myotis.”

Well, Jack thought, at least that particular tunnel wouldn’t be teeming with countless thousands of bats. He felt a little relieved.

“I hope I get to see those rare bats,” Steven told her. “I’m really anxious to shoot some pictures like the ones you just showed us.”

“Steven is a photographer,” Olivia explained.

“Oh.” Dr. Rhodes hesitated, then said, “Well, you understand, Mr. Landon, that you’ll have to use infrared film in the caves.”

“Uh…no! I knew I couldn’t use the flash attachment when the bats were flying out of the cavern because it interferes with their echolocation system—their sonar.

But I figured that when they weren’t flying, when they’re just hanging in the caves, I could use my regular flash attachment with fast film.”

“Uh-uh.” Dr. Rhodes shook her head. “The light from a flash attachment, or any kind of light at all, really bothers the bats. That’s why we keep the lighting in the Big Room quite low, and in Left Hand Tunnel there’s no light at all. You’ll have to use infrared film and an infrared filter on your flash.”

Steven looked crestfallen. “I don’t have any of that with me. But—do you think I can buy these things in the city of Carlsbad? Would a photo store carry them?”

“I’m sure it would.”

“Then I’ll just have to drive back to Carlsbad,” Steven said. “Right now.”

“Da-ad!” Ashley complained, drawing it out into two syllables. “I thought you were going to take us through the cavern.”

“Left Hand T-T-Tunnel,” Sammy agreed, nodding.

Carefully, favoring her sore ankle, Dr. Rhodes got to her feet before she told them, “Your dad couldn’t take you through Left Hand Tunnel by himself—you have to sign up to be part of a tour group. Let’s see, what time is it? You might be able to hook up with a tour, but you’ll need an adult with you. Kids under 16 aren’t allowed to tour the cavern without a parent or guardian.”

All their plans seemed to be falling apart, Jack realized. Their dad wanted to make the long drive back to the city of Carlsbad. It would take him at least two hours to get there, find a store, buy the film and filter—if the store had them—and drive back. Their mother needed to stay with Dr. Rhodes. Ashley and Sam and Jack couldn’t tour the cavern without an adult. So what were they supposed to do?

“I have an idea,” Dr. Rhodes said. “I can take you kids down into the cavern and see if there’s still room in the next tour to Left Hand Tunnel. I know the ranger who’s guiding the tour, so even if it’s pretty full, she might bend the rules a little bit and let you join the group as her responsibility.”

“Dr. Rhodes, I can’t let you make that trip down into the cavern,” Olivia objected. “I can see that you’re in pain from that swollen ankle.”

Wavering between hope and disappointment, Sam’s big eyes kept traveling from one adult to another. Ashley, too, seemed to be holding her breath, waiting to see how it would all turn out.

“Here’s another thought,” Dr. Rhodes said. “I’ll ask one of the office assistants to take the kids down. We’ll pull a little rank and get them into that tour.”