“The Bat Funeral”
Amelia Bell

“There’s a bat on my terrace,” Sarah said as she slid into the seat next to me. “A what?” I asked, surprised. “Un murciélago. A bat. It flew in and he can’t get out. I think it’s hurt.” Her terrace was enclosed on three sides by the walls of the apartment building; the fourth wall, the lowest one, was made of those big glass blocks that distort light so you can’t actually see anything through them, and was still about seven feet tall. “When did you find him?” I asked. “Yesterday. I went out to bring the laundry inside and it was flapping around. Its wing is hurt, I think. It’s quite sad”.

Sarah and I were both foreigners studying in Spain for the year. She was from Hampshire, in Southern England, birthplace of Jane Austen. I found this almost more exotic than the hot, dry Andalucían landscape, which felt familiar to my Californian sensibilities. We had found each other the first week of classes, recognizing another stranger in a strange land. On that mid-October day, a month into classes, we had settled into the comfortable routine of sitting next to each other in Teoría de la Narración and keeping each other awake when the oppressive heat and the soporific monotone of the professor made it nearly impossible to keep our eyes open. “What are you going to do about it? Is there Animal Control in Spain?” I asked.

A death glare from the professor silenced our conversation, and we turned to face the front.

***

The next day, over for lunch at Sarah’s apartment—she was an excellent cook and very welcoming for meals— I went to have a look at the bat. I stayed in the living room and gazed out through the window at it, telling myself I didn’t want to disturb him, scare him more than he already was. Really, I was scared—I don’t know why. It was tiny, smaller than I had expected, and looked pitiful and still lying on the terrace. It looked more like a crumpled cloth than a living creature.

I tried to Google “control de animales Córdoba”; “animales salvajes Córdoba” and “cómo salvar a los murciélagos”, and a hundred iterations of the same basic question: What the hell does one do about a bat on the terrace? Google was useless. I was glad it wasn’t my terrace. This problem, seemingly small and easily solved via a call to Wildlife Rescue in my native California, was so far outside my ordinary life in Spain that I had no idea where to start. The vicissitudes of daily life had not prepared me for this; one small step outside my comfort zone and I was unbelievably incompetent.

Looking at the bat, I was reminded of an injured bird that had been found outside my friend Molly’s house when we were eight. We ran towards the bird, past the large oak tree that shaded her house, believing we would nurse it back to health. Except, unfortunately, a swing hung from that oak tree, which Molly pushed as she ran past, and the swing swung back and hit me in the face. “I’m fine! It doesn’t hurt!” I said, still wanting to see the bird, but Molly, scared by the blood pouring out from my forehead, had insisted we go inside to get her mom. Molly’s and my dreams of forming a Disney-esque friendship with the bird were dashed,

I don’t know what happened to the bird; I assume a grown-up called Wildlife Rescue and they took care of it, though it’s equally if not more possible it died on the side of the road while I was sitting in my pediatrician’s office. Though I know I never saw it, let alone touched it, I have a strong, if false, memory of holding its little body in my hands, light and fragile as glass.

**
The next day was a Thursday, Day Three of The Bat Problem. It had lost a little of its shock value; I was now finding it sort of funny- who expects bat rescue to be a problem on their year abroad?

“I took Marion with me to the vet”—Marion is completely fluent in Spanish, and so is a very useful to have in these sorts of situations—“and the vet basically told us to fuck off, they were very nice about it but they obviously thought we were insane” Sarah reported.

Our sources of outside help were exhausted: we couldn’t think whom else to ask. I brought up the bat with everyone who asked me how I was, wanting them to understand what I saw as the extreme gravity of the situation, wanting them to leap on board with Operation Bat Rescue, to organize a Bat Saving Think Tank, summit meetings, call Geneva. I explained the bat problem to an attractive Italian medical student. He smiled politely while backing away slowly. I realized my worry about this bat was weird. I tried to take it less seriously.

“Why does it have to be my terrace?” said Sarah. “I can’t even get to my laundry. My favorite dress is out there.”
“Maybe he just wanted to try on your dress,” I joked.

Over the weekend, Sarah’s plan became to try to feed it and give it water, and maybe it would regain enough strength to fly away. The terrace was kind of echo-y; I imagined the bat trying to use his sonar to find the way out, getting confused as the sound waves bounced back to him from all directions.

**
On Tuesday, after we met with our conversation partner, Sarah turned to me and said the bat had died, and would I come with her to bury it.

It was decided that we would take it to the river, the Guadalquivir. A burial at sea seemed appropriate, and we also didn’t want to have to explain to the police why we were digging a hole in a local park.

We crossed the Puente Romano, the bridge that the Romans had built hundreds of years ago. I wondered if any of the tourists snapping pictures realized that there was a funeral procession in their midst. I wondered if we were the first people to stage a bat funeral in this river.

“Do we throw the bag in?” asked Sarah, once we got to our destination, a slightly out of the way overhang by the riverside, near an ancient and abandoned water wheel, the water rushing past about five feet under our shoes, the bridge high above us. The sun was bright and hot; I squinted as I looked up. The height of the bridge made me feel tiny. In the face of this bat in his small paper bag, I felt like an incompetent child.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think that might be littering. I think we just put in the bat. But don’t touch it, in case it had rabies or lice or something.”
Sarah made a move to open the bag. “Wait—“ I said. I felt the bat deserved some sort of send-off. “Okay, Mister Bat,” I said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save you and you had to die by yourself. I hope that you weren’t in pain, or scared, and if that was what was happening, I hope it’s better now. Um… I’m really sorry.” Sarah shook the bat out of the bag, and he fell with an undignified splash into the river below. Tears pricked at my eyes. Crying over a bat was certainly childish, but watching the bat flow down the river made me feel world-weary and bone-tired.

We paused on the bridge as we made our way back to our neighborhood. The river continued rushing below us. The bat would be long gone by now; the water was flowing quickly. I took a deep breath: we had done what we could. Whatever cosmic tally of best efforts there is would have to determine whether the small ceremony was just repayment for the bat’s life. Now, looking back, I don’t know that anyone could have done any better.

We leaned over the railing and watched the water go by.