I just got back from a big meetup of friends last weekend where I got to get up close and personal with two types of animals I really know very little about.

Animal the first: Brown Bat

I have caught glimpses of bats in the Sierras, looking out over the sides of cliffs at dusk. They’re hard to see because it’s night time, but if you chuck a pebble into the air at the right moment, one or more of the black splotches flopping around in the air will change course to confirm that the rock is not a tasty insect. I’d never gotten close to one in the wild because Batman still won’t let me in his HQ. This little fellow, on the other hand, I pet.
This bat somehow stole into my friend Mark’s house one night, and Mark trapped it between the window and the bug screen in the bathroom.
I stood on the ground below the second story window when he punched the screen out of the frame to free the bat. It took to winged flight halfway through its free fall and alit on this branch in the neighbor’s sideyard. I went up and hazarded a pat of it’s astonishingly soft fur before running back into the house to grab my camera. The bat was very accommodating.

Animal the second: Honey Bees

Mark and Tracy have lately acquired around 180,000 bees and hives in which to collect their honey. They were nice enough to let me get my first up close and personal beehive experience (protective netwear included). I took photos.
There are three gooey substances in a beehive: honey, beeswax, and propolis — the glue that they smear everything with. When we opened the hive there was almost no reaction on the part of the bees, who remained more or less ignorant of our presence throughout the process of inspecting their brood chambers.
I had been stung the previous day while playing catch barefoot on the back lawn, and decided that bee stings just aren’t as big a deal now that I’m all grownsed up, but I’m glad they didn’t respond defensively to my copious photographing and Tracy and Scott’s disassembly of their place of work.