The bats of New England are dropping like flies. 8,000-11,000 bats in Albany, NY area caves have died, over half the estimated bat population. Bats have been dying off throughout caves in New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
They are victims of White Nose Syndrome, so called because of the white fungus found on the noses of all dead bats. Scientists are not sure what is actually causing the bats’ deaths or how they got the fungus, but speculation is that cavers are perhaps spreading some virus that has caused the infestation. Little brown bats are sustaining the largest number of deaths, but the Indiana bat, an endangered species, as well as northern long-eared, eastern pipistrelle and other bat species are affected.
So why should we care? Well, for one bats are voracious eaters of crop- killing, people-biting insects. Too few bats will throw the whole ecological balance out of kilter.
Then there’s the suffering thing. Can you imagine having something like the bubonic plague. Pain, starvation, rotting innards, mental distress—all to the point of a miserable, lonely death. Now, it’s just a bat you say and nobody did anything to them, they got a naturally occurring disease and that's that.
But this gets to the nature of empathy and just how far we should go with extending it. The rebel Jesus took it to what is a still-revolutionary height by demanding we love not only our neighbor, but our enemy as well. That is, we should walk in the other’s shoes, pray for and extend good will to them, as we would to ourselves. Easy with those we like, devilishly hard for those we, ahem, don’t.
Yet we don't stop with enemies, we also show compassion, humanity, with animals, especially pets, who we tend to treat pretty much like one of the family. But why should we stop there? Why not show the same concern with any and all sentient beings?
Does the size of that being matter, or whither to and fro it flies, crawls or burrows? A little bug of some sort was crawling on my pants as I was sitting one day. I wondered, just what did the world look like from that teeny weeny itsy bitsy body, just larger than a speck of sand. It certainly had awareness. Like every living being I’ve ever seen it would scurry from pain and hurry to pleasure.
If we were that little bug would we want to stay sacrosanct, that is, would we want to stay secure in our body, would we want not to be stepped upon, or go splat on a windshield or be eaten by a bird? Would we want to nourish ourselves, maybe grab a crumb from the fiber off my thigh?
Feelings are feelings regardless of size or type of sentient being. Of course, human feelings are of the highest importance in terms of our earthly priorities, thus our concern for the “sanctity of human life.” But just because Fido looks at us with those big baleful eyes, tongue hanging out, tail wagging wildly should not have us forget that squirrel or snake or sparrow or squiggly little centipede all have the same feelings. It's just that we don’t have the same feelings for them.
But why is that relevant? Like any pursuit, is not our successful expression of compassion made stronger with exercise? Just because some creatures are less susceptible to personification, why should we let our subjective emotion overrule our uniquely human capacity to will empathy for those we find less loveable.
Like the stranger. Like the enemy. And like the bats of New England.
Richard F. Dawahare 2/20/08
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