Camping With Bats

There is nothing like a hike through poison ivy.

I was in the poison ivy league. It was nice to know the poison ivy was there, in case I ran out of toilet paper.

I had been bitten by the camping bug and a number of other bugs.

I was on a canoeing, hiking, and camping trip, following the journey of Lewis and Clark—Jerry Lewis and Dick Clark.

All hiking trails go uphill eventually. I missed my toaster. Dave Barry wrote that camping is nature’s way of promoting the motel industry. I encountered excessive gravity as I pitched my tent (not off a cliff) along the Missouri River. The mosquitoes were so thick, they made a shadow. I didn’t use mosquito netting. If I needed mosquitoes, I caught them by hand.

I chose my campsite as carefully as John Wayne had, as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, when he said, while lying on the ground after falling from his horse, “We’ll camp here.”

I gathered wood. Lint from my navel made a dandy fire starter, but next time, I’ll remove the lint from my navel before applying the match. I threw dried cow chips into the fire. Cow chips are not just for dipping. The burning cow chips made me smell better. It’s OK to stink like a sack of armpits when camping. Insect spray replaces showers.

I turned my tent out to graze while I hunkered down by the campfire. While munching on lichen, I discovered that shoelaces, cooked over an open fire, pass as high fiber beef jerky.

I crawled into the tent with an “Uff!” I was too tired to say “Uffda.” I was a spent gent in a lent tent. I fluffed up the ground before crawling into my sleeping bag (it’s important to extinguish a sleeping bag before going to sleep) and waited for Morpheus.

Have you ever tried to sleep with the feeling that someone is watching you? I grabbed my flashlight and shined it toward the roof of my tent. There were bat-shaped silhouettes there. They were the size of Bella Lugosi with the wingspan of a pelican. My tent had become a landing strip for bats. I know they were just trying to get by, but I poked at them with the flashlight, startling the bats into flight. They retaliated. They spent the night making as much noise as they could while pooping on my tent. I pushed an imaginary chest of drawers against the tent flap.

I live in a Batt Cave. I like bats. They don’t give me butterflies in my stomach. Grace on the wing, bats attack insects, not people. Bats eat what bugs them. They don’t tangle themselves in our hair. Why would they do that?

I had camped in the middle of a bat convention. Bats made approximately 147 forays per hour, snagging beetles like a centerfielder snags fly balls. Each made a pound of sound.

The night was half-sleeplessness and half-bats, but I endured.

There’s no crying in camping.