NVN Tuesday: WINNER OF INTERNATIONAL BAT WEEK, 2023
by Cecil Morris
Bureau of Land Management wildlife technician photographed William ShakespEAR, a female Townsend's big-eared bat, in Jackson County. William ShakespEAR won BLM's 2023 Bat Beauty Contest. Photo courtesy Emma Busk / Bureau of Land Management via Oregon Public Broadcasting.
*
William ShakespEAR—right, not the poet-actor- playwright who, maybe, made your high school English class a drag, but a Townsend’s big-eared bat—won the National Bat Beauty Contest this Halloween and brought his bouquet of mosquitoes and moths home to Ashland in southern Oregon, home of a pretty famous Shakespeare Festival where, I must admit, I was not bothered by any flying insects during an evening performance of Romeo and Juliet in the outdoor theater. So good on you, William ShakepEAR. Perhaps you can bring back glamour to big ears, which would benefit me, a man almost 70, with thinning hair and elongating ears (think King Charles III or the pendulous lobes of Nicole Kidman). I do not want to be Dumbo with a flat tire, Dumbo depressed, or Alfred E. Neuman deflated. Of course, you, Mr. ShakespEAR have perky, pricked up, Doberman-like ears, and I am sure no one makes fun of you. Too bad Bat Week has not had the success of Shark Week. We need a Spielberg thriller with blood and menace: EARS. Who’s listening now?
*
Cecil Morris taught high school English for 37 years. Now retired, he spends his time writing poems and shaking his head at the news. He has poems in or forthcoming from Cimarron Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and other literary magazines.