Bat study 'weird' but rewarding

By MATTHEW McCORMICK
Martinsville Bulletin Staff Writer

Fieldale resident Sara Rakes has always been crazy about animals. But this June she went completely batty.

The 19-year-old Christopher Newport University sophomore returned last month from a four-week trip to the Nevada desert, where she assisted with a study of the area's Townsend Big-Eared Bat population.

The journey proved to be no vacation. Among Rakes' duties was trudging up 6,000-foot mountains in the desert dusk and using special radio equipment to search the sky for bats until sun-up.

"You sit on the top of a mountain with a 6-foot-tall antenna and spin around in a circular motion until you hit a beep" from a radio transmitter scientists previously had attached to the bats, she said.

Those beeps helped Rakes -- the only undergraduate on the 12-member team assisting Christopher Newport biologist Dr. Rick Sherwin -- determine the approximate location of the bats throughout the night. That helped Sherwin discern information about the bats' feeding and roosting habits.

Although there was some randomness to the technique, called radio telemetry, Rakes said she and her teammates were not completely shooting in the dark. Using a field guide that Rakes had compiled throughout the school year, the group searched during the day for the plants that

harbored the bats' favorite insects to help decide what mountains to climb and where to point their antennas.

"I liked doing the plant surveys because I knew more (about desert plants) than the graduate students," Rakes said.

Still, the project was not one that Rakes -- an aspiring veterinarian and proud owner of five cats, a dog, three birds, a guinea pig and a tree frog -- ever envisioned herself doing when she chose to pursue a biology major in college.

"Working with bats was weird -- they looked like little flying rats," she said.

Bats were just one of a litany of creepy creatures Rakes and her fellow scientists encountered on the trip. Blood-sucking leeches, tent-chomping crickets, ill-tempered rattlesnakes and palm-sized scorpions all infested the group's desert campsites.

"I was getting ready to walk up a mountain and had a rattlesnake just dart across my path," she said. "It was pretty scary because it was a big snake."

While the snakes slithered, the crickets consumed. Part of an annual Mormon Cricket migration across the Nevada desert, the large insects descended upon the researchers' camps and ate holes in their tents.

Add to that scorching heat, bone-dry weather and a barren landscape and Rakes said the trip, her first west of the Mississippi, heightened her appreciation of her Virginia home.

"I hated the fact that it never rained there. There was not a lot of trees and barely any water at all," she said. "I missed our mountains a lot."

Despite that homesickness -- not to mention four weeks of no showers, no ice to cool down drinks and no indoor plumbing -- Rakes said her desert excursion was an invaluable learning experience.

"I found out I could do stuff that I didn't think I could do," she said. "I now know how to do radio telemetry, I can use a CB radio, I can set up a closed-circuit camera system."

Plus, she picked up a newfound appreciation for the outdoors -- preferably in smaller doses.

"When I was out there climbing mountains I was like, 'I'm never climbing a mountain again,'" she said, "and now I want to take my (15-and 17-year-old) sisters hiking in Fairy Stone (State Park) because I miss it."

Though Rakes said her trip to Nevada ended up having more positives than negatives, it was not enough to tip the scales away from pursuing her dream job.

"I don't really want to be a field biologist," she said. "I'd rather be a vet in a nice air-conditioned office."