I miss the Bats.

We’ve had a hard winter this year. Plant pots have exploded. The spring daffodils are only half their normal height. Nights are still cool enough to threaten a frost strong enough to kills the newly emerging buds. Somehow, the world has kept turning, rotating around the sun and tilting it’s axis to give us longer days here in the north. There is a late morning warmth and a gentleness to the rain. The leaves are one step removed from pushing out their new leaves, green and fresh and the insects have started to return to the air.

I am missing the bats again. I haven’t thought about them much this winter concerned more with the practicalities of life such as school runs and deadlines. Now there has been time to stand and stare. Now I miss them and worry if they will return even more than last year. I wonder if they will have young this year. I wonder if they have survived this long hard time; if they are weakened by prolonged hibernation.

I cannot imagine a summer’s evening without knowing that they are expertly picking their way along the gardens, swooping down to the allotments to feed and survive. I don’t even know if I watched the same bats as the year before. How long do bats live?

All I know is…

…I miss them.

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