Apparently it’s international bat appreciation day. I thought I would put together a social media post for the nature center I work at with a little information and encouraging some bat love.
Well, this has quickly devolved into peering closely at different Canva graphics as I attempt to find a cartoon bat that resembles any of the species we have in Minnesota. After eliminating the Halloween bats and the Batman bats, there are a some cute realistic bats, but they seem more like some kind of fruit bat.
I guess it’s time to find a public domain photo of an actual bat, but has anyone else spent too long trying to identify something stylistic that is clearly not meant to be identified?
Ask my nearest and dearest how many times that they’ve heard some variation on “just what species of (dragonfly / damselfly) is that supposed to be, anyway?” In other words, guilty.
There’s a quote from the sci-fi series Firefly that gets used around here a lot: made with longing. The scene it came from goes like this.
Inara: Does it seem every supply store on every border planet has the same five rag dolls and the same wood carvings of… what is this? A duck? Kaylee: That’s a swan. I like it. Inara: You do? [Kaylee strokes the swan carving.] Kaylee: Looks like it was made with… you know, longing. Made by a person really longed to see a swan. Inara: Perhaps because they’d only heard of them by rough description.
It’s a rather useful concept for situations like this.
