Chasing Bats and Tracking Rats: Urban Ecology, Community Science, and How We Share Our Cities
Processing A process is a series of related actions or steps that scientists take to get to an outcome In urban ecology processing refers to the steps we take to collect data when we are sampling individual animals plants or people in a population Many types of information can be collected during processing An ecologist might want to know how old an animal is how heavy it is and its sex male or female They might collect several different samples from an individual including fur blood or urine They might also want to tag the animal or plant so they can identify it later Processing the Fredericton sixth graders might involve taking their names so we know who we’ve measured measuring their heights and recording what school they were from Results Results are the end or outcome of an experiment or sampling In the plant experiment the result would be seeing which plant the one with light or the one without grew taller In the example with our sixth graders the result would be the average height calculated from the data we collected 6
Chapter 1 Chasing Down Big Browns How much do wildlife rely on city green spaces I bet the last time you played at the park you saw some wildlife sharing it with you Birds in trees Squirrels running around Turtles sunning themselves on rocks in a pond Parks and green spaces are often the closest thing to the natural habitats of animals and plants in urban environments So we like to think of them as being good habitat for wildlife in the city That’s what I thought when I set out to study city bats in High Park a large green space in Toronto Canada It seemed like the perfect habitat for city bats High Park is full of tall old trees that bats might like to sleep in It also has a large pond that bats could forage or hunt for insects But after chasing bats around the park all summer I’d barely caught any Where were the bats going at night to feed Where were they sleeping during the day It didn’t seem like bats were using the park at all But I was about to learn in the most dangerous way possible that this wasn’t quite the case Chasing Down Big Browns 7
Who’s afraid of a big brown bat The park is closed What are you still doing here Pausing I looked up at the large grumpy police officer standing in front of the picnic table I was sitting at Around me were a number of strange items test tubes for storing samples a margarine container full of measuring tapes a pile of tiny felt bags and a kitchen scale Beside me sat Krista my bat catching catching partner in crime She and I were now several hours into processing the 25 bats we had caught in the chimney of a nearby house I sighed It was one o’clock in the morning and it had already been a very long night Earlier that evening Krista had climbed a ladder and dangled herself and our roost trap over the side of a four story home After searching all summer we’d finally found our first bat colony in a neighborhood filled with large old houses and trees just a few blocks away from High Park The people living there had given us permission to climb on the roof that night TOOLS OF THE TRADE Usually I use mist nets to catch bats while they are out flying at night Mist nets are like big fine mesh fishing nets that we put high up in the air between two poles These nets are split into sections called tiers with baggy pockets at the bottom Unsuspecting bats fly into these nets and get tangled in those pockets Before starting my processing I carefully untangle them making sure they aren’t hurt When we need to catch bats in areas where there are too many trees or the ground is too hard to put up a mist net we use harp traps instead Harp traps are made of a big metal square with fishing line looped around it Bats try to fly through the fishing line get caught and then fall into a bag at the bottom The roost trap Krista used to catch bats as they left the chimney for the night was a lighter and smaller version of a harp trap But the easiest way to catch a bat is when they’re roosting in an area that we can get into like a cave or an attic Then we can just go up with a gloved hand and pick them off the walls 8
As the sun set I had watched excitedly from a lower section of the roof as our trap filled with bats After an hour Krista had lowered a bag full of squirming bats into my arms I had almost squealed at the thought of how much data we were going to be able to collect from them Everything had been going perfectly until it had come time for Krista to get down from the roof As Krista stepped onto the first rung of the ladder she slipped Krista had fallen from the ladder and tumbled toward the edge of the roof But I had jumped forward and grabbed her by the belt just before she fell off Thinking about it again had my heart racing Krista’s near death experience had been stressful enough and now the police officer shining his light in my face was giving me a headache Ma’am the police officer said snapping me back to the present please answer my question What are you doing in the park Chasing Down Big Browns 9
