Bat Monitoring: Week 1

A story about my experience last night doing Bat Monitoring with my great friend JS.  This is our second year monitoring bats.  And we were assigned a new trail we had never been on before.  When we bat monitor we take a GPS/Ultrasound recorder with us that when analyzed will tell the college student doing the study what type of Bat we found and exactly where.  I call her BatGirl. She has pastel floral tattoos all over her upper chest and down one leg.  She is a unique girl for sure.  Anywho.  JS and I start out and its only 9.30pm a little light, so along the way we find a baby raccoon attempting to hide and climb a tree, which he is unable to do at this point it seemed.  He was adorable. Of course as we go along the woods keep getting darker.  The whippoorwills were really numerous and lovely to hear too.  Now for some reason I'm particularly jumpy, and it doesn't help that my beloved friend JS has a penchant for reading vampire novels and sharing them during nighttime hikes, and according to last night watching giant bug movies (thanks for the preying mantis visual by the way that walks on the ground but won't leap at us from the trees).  And by the way, I determined that my monitoring system has enough heft to it that hurling it in the face of giant preying mantis' might give us a 3 second lead time if we have to run. :D We did hear several bats on our monitor, many deer in the woods VERY close to us.  But, the ultimate moment of our fine trip last night happened as we walked and I noticed JS doing a strange side stepping motion.  I wasn't sure what had gotten into her in the middle of a dark dense forest.  I stopped and looked at her and just as I caught a glimpse of a June Bug the size of Godzilla against the night time sky it came zooming right at me!!! Needless to say I was starting to freak out.  However the bat monitor went off and then the JuneBug was gone.  Now, tell me, How BIG was the bat that ate Junebug a la Godzilla?????  Cripes, I almost lost my mind! LOL  And strangely the bats are not the scariest things out there.  But the good part is that I'm game to go back again every two weeks. :)