As far as I can tell, while it can carry the fungus, the Townsend big ear bat does not get sick with white nose syndrome.
And, I gather, this is the only bat species to inhabit these particular caves. However, I could check with one of my high school buddies to see if they know differently. I just don't know how to contact him. Perhaps another one knows. And the location (Vrede too) points out is at least 1000 miles from the caves here.
Useless, if it can reach WA it can reach anywhere in the West, duh.
North America’s bats are facing their own devastating pandemic. White-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a cold-loving fungus, has killed more than 6 million bats since it was first detected in an upstate New York cave in 2006. It threatens some species, such as the northern long-eared bat, with extinction.
The fungus, aptly named Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has since spread across the U.S. and Canada—carried both by the routine movements of bats and by hitchhiking on cave-curious humans. In its wake, white-nose syndrome has left carnage: Upwards of 90 percent of some regional bat populations have been wiped out.
“White-nose is so much worse for bats than coronaviruses are to humans,” says Kate Langwig, a conservation biologist at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Virginia. “This would kind of be our worst nightmare for a pathogen.” Langwig explains that P. destructans can survive in a cave for more than 10 years without any hosts present, and that the accompanying disease causes “crazy high mortality.”
But a spark of hope is glowing inside North American caves. Populations of little brown bats, a formerly abundant species that’s experienced the most dramatic losses from the disease, seem to be stabilizing in some places affected early on in the epidemic, including parts of New York state and New England.
I guess you guys know that if the bats die off there won't be any more tequila.
Ah, but since the white nose problem affects bats hibernating, and I'm not sure but Mexican bats don't hibernate much if at all, the tequila supply should be A-OK (assuming that bats are important for agave production in some way, like pollination?)...
I once decided to emulate a bat and stuck my mattress to the ceiling. Then I slept on the floor. I got white ass syndrome because of it.
I would have Velcroed myself to the ceiling and left the mattress underneath in case the Velcro failed, but that's just me.
That would be another way to go. Initially I thought of getting some super size Ronald McDonald shoes with Velcro soles along with a pillow size Velcro ceiling patch. The whole plan went to shit since it relies on another person or two to heft me up there at bedtime. And I can't count on Dow Jones and his idiot brother Sow to stop by every night.
That would be another way to go. Initially I thought of getting some super size Ronald McDonald shoes with Velcro soles along with a pillow size Velcro ceiling patch. The whole plan went to shit since it relies on another person or two to heft me up there at bedtime. And I can't count on Dow Jones and his idiot brother Sow to stop by every night.
You can lay back on a stepladder and raise your feet to the ceiling . . . or so I've heard.
Weather and climate disasters in 2021 have killed 538 people in the U.S. and cost over $100 billion, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association....
Driving the news: From January through the end of September, the U.S. has experienced 18 weather and climate disasters that each cost more than $1 billion, per the report.
* Additionally, 538 people have died from the disasters, which is more than twice the number of deaths from all billion-dollar disasters that occurred in 2020, per the report.
Details: The disasters include four tropical cyclones, two flooding events, one combined drought and heat wave, one wildfire event, and one combined winter storm and cold wave.
* Hurricane Ida leads as the year's most expensive disaster to date. Recovery from Ida has cost $60 billion and ranks among the top five most costly hurricanes on record since 1980 — and its cost is only expected to rise....
Exactly as has been predicted for 30+ years while fossil fuel shills and minions were whining that climate action would hurt our economy.
As the storm system pushed on land, its barometric pressure dropped to 945.2 millibars, making it the strongest storm ever recorded to hit the West Coast of the United States. Hurricane-force winds were recorded in multiple locations in the state, downing trees and leaving tens of thousands of people without power. With 4.02 inches of rain, San Francisco set a record for the most rain on an October day in the city’s recorded history. Sacramento received 5.44 inches, an all-time single-day record that came on the heels of another notable milestone: 212 days with no measurable precipitation....
While much of the Western U.S. continues to suffer from extreme drought, the weekend’s deluge across the northern half of California proved a jarring contrast. Rainfall records were broken in multiple locations, while multiple feet of snow piled up in the Sierra Nevada mountains above elevations of 8,000 feet.
On the bright side, the deluge, which followed several days of rain the week before, brought a swift end to California’s brutal fire season, which will almost certainly mean 2021 will not break the record set in 2020 for the most acres burned by wildfires in the state’s history.
The storm also gave badly depleted California lakes and reservoirs a much-needed reprieve.
...
No word on how regional street paving has been affected.
I once decided to emulate a bat and stuck my mattress to the ceiling. Then I slept on the floor. I got white ass syndrome because of it.
Perhaps Neo can find a new calling, pollinating all the agave plants from California to Brazil?
It would keep him busy, at least.
Or perhaps he prefers just to vegetate as is.
In the intervening two weeks since entertaining the idea of sleeping as a bat, I have figured out how to do it. What I use is velcro knee and wrist pads and 6" square mating velcro pads on the wall and ceiling. Also velcro foot pads that don't come into play until I'm ready to sleep. This way I am able to get up there without help. Slept three days in a row as a bat and am now two inches taller. Never felt better.
I once decided to emulate a bat and stuck my mattress to the ceiling. Then I slept on the floor. I got white ass syndrome because of it.
Perhaps Neo can find a new calling, pollinating all the agave plants from California to Brazil?
It would keep him busy, at least.
Or perhaps he prefers just to vegetate as is.
In the intervening two weeks since entertaining the idea of sleeping as a bat, I have figured out how to do it. What I use is velcro knee and wrist pads and 6" square mating velcro pads on the wall and ceiling. Also velcro foot pads that don't come into play until I'm ready to sleep. This way I am able to get up there without help. Slept three days in a row as a bat and am now two inches taller. Never felt better.
I once decided to emulate a bat and stuck my mattress to the ceiling. Then I slept on the floor. I got white ass syndrome because of it.
Perhaps Neo can find a new calling, pollinating all the agave plants from California to Brazil?
It would keep him busy, at least.
Or perhaps he prefers just to vegetate as is.
In the intervening two weeks since entertaining the idea of sleeping as a bat, I have figured out how to do it. What I use is velcro knee and wrist pads and 6" square mating velcro pads on the wall and ceiling. Also velcro foot pads that don't come into play until I'm ready to sleep. This way I am able to get up there without help. Slept three days in a row as a bat and am now two inches taller. Never felt better.
Aren't you just the precocious one?
Better than being the puerile one. Buy the ticket; take the ride.
Fingers crossed.
