Vickery Cave Bat Flight
Media: Pencil
Artist: Glenn Mills
Vickery Cave Bat Flight
I awoke Saturday morning to the peaceful sound of the waterfalls in the canyon far below. Wait a minute....! It hasn't rained in Oklahoma in over three weeks, not to mention I did not see or hear any waterfalls the day before while peering over the edge of the canyon. What I heard was the bats returning from a long nite of skeeter huntin......! I sprang from my bed (actually I had slept in the back of the truck being to hot and tired the day before to set up a tent), and rushed to the top of the hill and joined the others in awe as the 4 million and some odd bats were returning to Vickery Bat Cave. The night before, we had witnessed the flight of over 4 million Mexican Freetail bats winding their way out the cave entrance, down the valley, and eventually forming their familiar snaky pattern as the huge dark cloud of bats grew on the horizon. For no less than three hours the bats kept coming out of the cave.....steadly. How do you count that many bats....? At night.......?
As I stood with the others that morning watching the ballet of beating wings, I thought, "Man, this is like something out of the Ten Commandments." It seemed as if Mother Nature had a big invisible funnel and all the bats were fluidly being sucked into the cave. I had seen bat flights before, but never one in reverse....and in such enormous proportions. Standing with my back to the canyon and cave entrance, head skyward, the little dots quickly became swerving, darting, twisting blurs. Some would fold back their wings and dive, some just flutterd down like dry leaves on a windless autumn day. Once in a while, one would zoom very close to my ears making a very quick 'swoosh' as it passed by. The others were complaining about the odor rising up from the cave, but thanks to my sinuses and millions of acres of maturing Golden Rod in Southeast Missouri.........I could smell nothing.
Vickery Bat Cave, located in the Glass/Gloss Mountains of Oklahoma, is home to an estimated 4 million Mexican Freetail Bats. It is a maternal colony that comes there every spring to give birth. The colony is sparse (?) in the spring, but as the young are born and grow, it becomes enormous later in the summer. In just a few weeks, the bats will migrate to a warmer climate until next spring.
Vickery Bat Cave is in the Vickery Karst System in Major County, OK. It and 18 other known caves with four miles of total passage is on the Whitlaw Ranch, a sprawling 7,000 acre ranch dotted with oil wells (clang....chugachugachuga-clang....chugachugachuga all night long..!) Those who arrived late Friday night and didn't see the oil wells wondered if the noise might be Bigfoot lurking about. "Naw", I told them "Those are tom-toms and 'boy, we're in a tight spot'!" Gary and Cinda Inman along with their son Clint, who has just gotten into caving, are the caretakers. Clint spent the day before we arrived mowing a nice camping area for us, and Friday night entertaining us with stories of the live snake collection he used to have and showing us where a rattler grazed his little finger that morning while tying some flagging tape to a stake. This is part of my answer when people ask "Why do you cave"........meeting such nice, gracious and interesting people like the Inmans.
The Vickery Karst System is a complex system of gypsum caves. It is the most studied gypsum karst complex in North America. The gypsum is so pure, there is a gypsum mine on the ranch that mines food grade gypsum. Gypsum in food........? Check out your next Hershey's Bar! Vickery Karst System is also home to Nescatunga Cave, unique in it's own rights that it has over a mile of passage with no entrances. Seems that gypsum caves have a lot of entrances. In fact, one of the caves in the system holds the world's record at 69 entrances......! By looking at the map, it is apparent that Vickery and Nescatunga were once the same cave. According to Scott Christenson, a geologist and fellow caver with with TROG, who gave a short lecture on the geology of the area, "The geology is always changing. In fact, that big rock at the cave entrance was not there the last time I was here a few weeks ago." I love these geology lectures, but they always lose me after they say, "This is a rock." All the caves are in the Blaine Gypsum of Permian Age. Vertical relief is less than 100 feet, and the Blaine is interrupted by stringers of shale and dolomite. These latter rocks have cause a "level" situation in the caves. "Upper rooms" are found about 20 feet above the stream levels in the largest shale layers. "This is what attracts the bats", Scott said. "The rooms have their own mico-environment that is suitable for the maternal colony of bats."
All the bats had returned by the time the sun came up. It was like Mother Nature had turned off her "faucet of bats". An eery calm settled over us as we made our way to back to camp for coffee and bagles supplied by the Bagle Lady. There were to be led trips to Nescatunga that day and the lists were soon made. Being true to form, I was the 'last man to sign up'. Three grottos had been invited to witness the Vickery Cave bat flight and tour Nescatunga Cave with its huge beautiful gypsum crystals. Meramec Valley Grotto from St Louis, Boston Mountain Grotto from Springfield, and TROG from Tulsa, so of course my trip did not start until 1PM. What to do until then......? A group of young energetic people from MVG wanted to see if they could find another cave, Sculptured Cave, that was on the other side of the canyon but still part of the same system.....so I opted to take the hike with them.......I'll never learn...down the canyon walls...up the canyon walls...down, up, d..... The old man made it but I am paying today......that's why this is so long, I am too tired and achy to get up! We never found Sculptured, but we did find numerous puds that when we went in, the floors started caving in! Very unstable area. The only thing I have seen that is more unstable is Pine Mountain Gold Mine in Villa Rica, GA. ....but....we did manage to find Oak Tree 'Ripped Pants' Cave, Oak Tree 'Three Holes' West Cave, Oak Tree 'Not in This Sink' East Cave, Oak Tree 'Pud' North Cave, Oak Tree 'Enter at Your Own Risk Southern Fried' Cave, which we went into and had a strong odor commin from within. The lead caver said it might connect to Vickery Bat Cave........I think it might have been the beans I dipped my bagle in....
The bat flight Saturday night was no less spectacular than the night before. Lots of people starting showing up before dusk. Everyone was wondering when the bat flight would start. Having been there the night before, I had the advantage and said "8:12 PM". Sure enough, 8:12 on the dot the flight began.....ahem. We were standing across the canyon from the cave entrance, but the bats seemed to want to follow the winding canyon until they got to us and then zoomed over head creating a nice breeze in the torrid Oklahoma heat. Someone brought a net on a long pole and captured one of the bats and was showing and explaining to all the kids about bats. Kodak moment. I kept my eye on him to see if he was going to release it. He did, but not around the crowd.
Sunday morning I awoke to gentle rain carassing my face as I has once again slept in the back of my truck (no camper top). Nescatunga has two entrances and was a mile long thru trip so I had used my truck to shuttle cavers Sat. I was unable to park under my tarp due to lots of people showing up Sat evening and didn't want to bother moving vechiles. Only thing was.....it wern't rain...!..its was the bats returning......! Needless to say, no one was drinking coffee with open cups while watching the return of the bats that morning. My sleeping bag, tarps, everything was covered in itty-bitty bat turds! Ever study a bat turd.......up close........like waking you up by hitting you on the nose.....?
Told you I never learn because Sunday after we broke camp and a good round of caver hugs, I followed the same young energetic group up Glass/Gloss Mountain located on the eastern edge of the Blaine escarpment. Gloss Mountain, now a state park, gets its name from the sun reflecting off the selenite crystals on top. Hues of azurite, ultramarine, turquoise abound. After about a 1000 feet in elevation gain(whew), we were on a flat mesa about a quarter mile long by an eighth mile wide. It wasn't long before somebody spotted a rattler and off we went, fumbling for our cameras. The rattler wasn't in the posing mood and disappeared in a crack on the edge of the cliff. So, we toured the mesa, stopping to pose for pictures and gazing over the flat land below to the north, and the rising Blaine escarpment to the south and west. The Oklahoma red dirt and the shape of the walls kinda reminded me of Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia. On the way back, we decided to see if the rattler was in a better mood. We made our way to where he was but he was gone. I walked over to the other side of the cliff and ........buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Everyone said I looked like a dancer in the Nutcracker Suite getting out of there. This time, the rattler was in more of a posing mood, sitting there all pretty, and coiled, and buzzzzzzin. One brave........?......soul in the group managed to capture the rascal by the tail and then we really had our Kodak moment. Everytime he stepped forward to show us the rattler up close, everyone started scrambling backwards.....hahaha.....including me! I have never seen a rattler with such a green tint before........and I had been treking in green undergrowth all weekend........?!? When we let the rattler go, he/she crawled off into this green undergrowth and it looked like someone had an eraser.......... Needless to say, I stayed on the beaten path after that..........
Nescatunga Cave was threatened by road expansion, but the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) is very much aware of the presence of Nescatunga Cave under Highway 412 and has been actively working with cavers to avoid damaging the cave. TROG and BMG members did a cave radio survey under the highway using MVG's cave radio with active participation from ODOT (which was actually the start of the idea for the TROG/MVG/BMG weekend gathering).
Many, many thanks to Earl Hancock of MVG who set up the trip for us, Scott Christenson TROG, Larry, Clint Inman, the Whitlaw Ranch......and last but certainly not least, Mother Nature for an exceptional weekend of fun, food, and fellowship!
Oh yeah, one more thing. Will someone explain why I was being bitten by skeeters while watching the 4 mil+ bat flight?
On second thought........nebbermind.
