One of the fun things to teach young children is how to find answers to the many questions with which they pester adults. It helps to have a great collection of reference books, particularly those with colorful illustrations.
Amy, whose fourth birthday we celebrated last week, loves all creatures great and small: birds, mammals, fish and reptiles. She thinks it’s her job to protect all of these critters, even though she knows some are not to be touched. She regularly saves lizards from her dog, which spends much of his time outdoors pointing them, as he was bred to find and point birds. I once saw him pointing a fly sunning itself on the back of the couch. Well, he never was trained to be a hunting dog; he just inherited genes that compel him to pose in grotesque positions while fixated on any small living thing.
Anyway, since most of Amy’s questions have to do with the various wildlife she finds in our hillsides and canyon, I acquired a new reference book by Tamara Eder, a noted author of nature books with a degree in environmental conservation sciences. “Mammals of California” (Lone Pine Publishing), unlike the unwieldy, hardcover coffee table books, is a most practical reference. At a tidy five-inch-by-eight-inch size with rounded corners, tough cover and thick pages, it’s actually a proper field guide. It even slips into a backpack though it looks great on a desk with its lovely cover shot of a mountain lion.
Our first search was to answer a question about bats. “If it can fly, why isn’t it a bird?”
Well, it just isn’t a bird, it’s a mammal. And it doesn’t have feathered wings like a bird; it has skin stretched across its fingers and back to the legs. That was the sum of my bat facts.
Our new book has an entire chapter on bats, 27 pages with illustrations of 26 varieties in families such as free-tailed, evening, leaf-nosed, mastiff, fringed, long-eared, small-footed, long-legged, hoary, long-tongued and those of descriptive colors: pallid, spotted, red, yellow, silver-haired and big brown among others. Oh, and the Western Pipistrelle, smallest bat in the U.S. with a wingspan of only eight inches.
The bat that we found clinging to the eaves, disoriented at noon, was most likely of the evening bat family, most common in California. We sometimes hear their echolocation sounds at night as they hunt for insects. I’ve always found them kind of spooky, and I know they carry rabies, but I didn’t want to prejudice Amy against them. So we read on.
“No other mammals in California are as misunderstood as bats. They are thought to be mysterious creatures of the night, souls of the dead and blind, rabid creatures that commonly become tangled in people’s hair. In truth, bats are extremely beneficial creatures whose considerable collective hunger for night-flying insects results in fewer agricultural pests.” Well, isn’t that special. I remind Amy that even though they have their place in the ecosystem, bats are definitely in the do-not-touch category of wildlife.
I suppose it comes as no surprise that rodents take up an inordinate portion of this book with 34 pages devoted to the mouse family, which includes the endangered kangaroo rat and the common muskrat. Amy wondered why we have deer mice and house mice (which we’ve been calling field mice) and not the voles she sees at her Aunt Betty’s place in Montana, generally deceased after an encounter with Hero the cat. We found the California vole is the only one likely to frequent our mountain ranges, although white-footed, Western red-backed, long-tailed, Townsend’s, creeping, sagebrush, Sonoma tree voles and Western heather voles all can be found in Northern California.
Having dealt with the less cuddly species, Amy turned to the chapter on carnivores with fabulous photographs and illustrations of canines: foxes, coyotes and wolves; cats: mountain lions and bobcats; and the American Black Bear.
Then there’s the weasel family, which includes martens, fishers, mink, wolverines, badgers and otters. I’ve often wondered how that one family could include such a wide variety of temperament. The badger is a pigeon-toed, short-legged, scowling-faced digging machine with attitude. It does, however, keep down the population of ground squirrels and other small rodents, and provides large dens for other burrowing animals. Otters, on the other hand, are the most playful of creatures. “River otters amuse themselves by rolling, sliding, diving, body surfing, pushing and balancing floating sticks with their noses.” Given the choice of a future existence, I’d like to come back as an otter.
“Mammals of California” is available at bookstores or by calling 1.800.518.3541. It’s great to have around to answer those tough questions from curious children.