By the Light of a Honeymoon

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So perhaps the honeymoon is those nights of June when a honey-colored moon floats low in the southern sky.

Not Blind, Crazy, or Evil

It's not just the golden moon that lives in the summer skies. So too does one of Earth's most unusual creatures, an animal which has probably been maligned and misunderstood more than any other: the bat.

Bats are not just the only mammals which can truly fly. About one-fifth of all mammal species in the world are bats. About 100 species of bat are found in North America. And the numbers of individual bats can be enormous: Some particular cave colonies in Texas consist of up to 20 million bats. But their fearsome reputation is nut at all warranted. The vampire bat, that most feared member of the family, bothers livestock, not people. Rabid bats arc dangerous, but other mammals that could bite you are just as likely to be infected.

Another misconception about bats is that they are blind (actually, some ,cc rather well). As you've no doubt heard, bats emit high-pitched sounds (most of them above the range of human hearing) and catch their echoes to form sonar images of the objects around them. They spend virtually the entirety of their waking hours using this sophisticated equipment to pursue flying insects, including many of the biting ones that are pests to humans. A single bat can consume more than 200 insects per day, which explains the rapidly growing number of bat houses in the backyards and gardens of North America. What you might not know is that flocks of bats may rise up to 10,000 feet above the ground, and that some species migrate from as far as Canada to the Gulf states in winter? Anyone who has felt a hat whirl by their head can attest to their speed, and some species have been seen to dive at speeds of up to 80 mph! Finally, some species-including the little brown bat so common from Alaska to Georgia, California to New-found-land-may live to an age of 30 years or more.

Saturn and Cicadas

What is the connection between the planet with rings of spendor and a loudly singing insects called the cicada? Only that both planet and insect put on a strange special show just a small number of times in each human life—for Saturn once about every 13 or 15 years, and for a particular type of cicada once every 13 or 17 years. Oddly enough, in the summer of 1995, the two cycles coincide: Saturn appears ringless, and it is the time of hatching and amazing singing for the most famous batch of the periodic cicadas sometimes incorrectly called the 17-year "locusts."

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