The Indiana Bat

Nobody likes bats.

I say this, knowing perfectly well that one of my readers has a Bats from Europe and North America sitting on her shelf, but she and I notwithstanding, raise your hand if you can honestly say this is cute:


This particular bat is myotis sodalis: myotis meaning mouse ear, and sodalis meaning companion. Small and unassuming, eaters of destructive flying insects like alfalfa weevils and gypsy moths, the myotis sodalis, or Indiana Bat, is truly the ideal overhead nighttime companion. It’s endangered, probably due to habitat loss and insecticide, but in some areas, it still thrives.

Bats, like myself, are creatures of the night, and the sounds they make—high-pitched beeps and screeches to assist in echolocation—can only be heard by a select few, rendering them typically silent in human standards, easily forgotten, ultimately ignored.

The Indiana Bat is named for the state where it was first discovered and described, but a colony of them thrives near my home in Pennsylvania. They have found a hospitable spot in the kind of place that I, myself, have consistently found hospitable, especially when I’m far from my home: a church.


This little white church sits on the windy country road to Canoe Creek State Park, casts its shadow over a cemetery where lie several of my ancestors, and literally has bats in the belfry—thousands of them. Home to several thousands of Little Brown Bats, this church, which hasn’t held a human worship service in decades, also plays host to a few hundred Indiana Bats.

My mother used to take my brother and me to Canoe Creek to swim in the lake, and now that I’m older, I enjoy piloting a canoe around the surface of the lake or hiking through the woods along its edge. Its historic limestone kilns are worth a hike to see, and apparently the bats think so, too. Their population around the lake is divided between the church and the kilns.

I used to dislike, maybe even hate, bats, but I find myself feeling a kinship with myotis sodalis. In its displacement from the land it was named for, it still seeks companionship under the eaves of a church, just as I have each time I have found myself living in a new place. And even in the face of adversity, these bats congregate together near lakes and other bodies of water before setting out on their own.

They may be tiny and unassuming, but myotis sodalis carry a message of strength and hope on their little skinny wings.