I’ve read the expression her face fell in a few books but I had never seen it happen in real life It was like gravity snuck up and pulled the smile out of Mom’s cheeks How many times have I explained this she asked But No you listen Brubeck Mom has unusually long index fingers like magic wands so when she holds one up you shush Despite how common divorces are in this country I think of marriage as forever You know what else is forever I’d heard this speech a bunch of times before so I knew the answer Your being my mom is forever That’s right I’m a mom first always before anything else in life Can’t you be my mom and Ginger’s wife at the same time She looked at me hard Then a little bit of her smile came back Maybe when I’m convinced When I’m absolutely sure that Ginger is as committed to being in your life as she is in mine In other words no progress has been made on the marriage front And I should learn to keep my trap shut 10 SCIENCE SQUAD
The Bat-Detecting Project Mr Fong is such a goofball You’d think a science nerd who’s old like Mom would be all serious But when we met in the Dolores Norton Middle School science room today to review the details of the Science Squad bat project he was wearing plastic fangs On his desk sat a big mosquito made of twisted wire Did Mr Fong make that Does he not have a life As soon as we’d all taken our seats he flapped his arms and pretended to fly around his desk Then he scooped up the mosquito turned it belly-up and mimed biting its neck Like a vampire that ran out of human corpses It was kind of funny but we all rolled our eyes and pretended it wasn’t When he was done with his blood-sucking routine Mr Fong pulled the fangs out of his mouth You could hear him slurping back strings of saliva Ewww That Oscar-level performance he said was to honor all of you who love science enough to set foot in the middle school during 11
summer break I salute you He bowed showing us the bald top of his head Then he got right down to business Just to review this project is about acoustic monitoring Your job is to help discover what kind of bats are in our region based on their sounds You’ll all be listening to the bat calls using an ultrasound detector Ideally you’ll also record them Then you’ll put the sound file into a database logging in as much information as you have about the sound Where and when you heard the sample are the most important things to report Laura’s hand shot up and she didn’t wait until she was called on to start talking And what kind of bat it is Mr Fong cocked his head and twisted his mouth Well maybe If you’re really sure Let me show you what the problem with that might be He opened his laptop so we couldn’t see the screen Listen to example one He tapped a key Squeaking and scraping sounds poured out of his little computer for a few seconds Now here’s example two More squeaking and scraping a little louder and deeper than the first time Can you identify those different Wisconsin bats 12 SCIENCE SQUAD
We all started shouting out random species we’d heard of Little brown Big brown Fruit bat Indiana bat Mr Fong held up his hands and we quieted down Fruit bats only live in warmer regions I knew that said Laura Nevertheless I believe we’ve proved my point While it’s great to listen closely to your recordings and try to tell them apart it’s harder than you might think to identify them So we’ll let the bat experts who run the database identify the species for sure TK raised his hand Does it matter what kind of bats we find Mr Fong shook his head It’s not that there are certain types you’re supposed to find The bat scientists just want information from your region of North America They also like to compare data over time For example it seems that little brown bats are becoming less common Anybody know why 13 Nocturnal Symphony
