70 Nebraskaland • May 2020
By Julie Geiser
BLOWN FROM A TREE
A few summers ago a thunderstorm with massive winds
swept through North Platte. A friend of mine was in her
front yard assessing the damage from downed branches
from a tree in her yard when she came across an entangled
mass lying on the ground that she couldn't identify. It
looked like a cross between tree bark and some sort of
mushy mushroom, and she wasn't about to touch it, so she
texted a photo of it to me asking if I knew what this strange-
looking thing was.
Excited, I knew it was a mother eastern red bat clinging
desperately onto her babies or pups. They had blown out of
the tree and were on the ground where, if not assisted, could
be preyed upon by dogs or cats or stepped on by unknowing
people while cleaning up debris.
The mother, eventually, could have gotten herself and her
pups back to the tree by clawing her way through the grass
with the thumbs on her wings, but it may have taken a while
as the family was blown a good distance from the tree.
Getting the family back to the tree was simple with some
human intervention. I took a stick that had fallen out of the
tree and gently nudged it next to the entangled mass. Within
seconds, the mother's tiny feet and one of her pups latched
onto the stick while still tightly clinging together. From
there, I climbed a ladder and laid the stick into a crotch of
the tree. I snapped a couple photos, turned to climb down the
ladder, and when I looked back they were gone, vanished into
the crevices of the tree and blending in so well I could not
fi nd them. I looked several times to see if I could detect any
movement but there was none.
Isn't it amazing how in nature these animals are so adapted
to their surroundings that sometimes we don't even know
they are there? It was a great experience to get to help these
little creatures survive another day and to get a glimpse of
them in the wild.
THE LAST STOP
PHOTO
BY
JULIE
GEISER
