Writing -- Baby Talk: A walk on the wild side

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 16 June 2004 issue.

"Is it real, is it alive?" the little boy asked, gazing in rapt wonder at the tiny, bundle of fur in my hand. As if in answer two long, translucent ears swivelled towards the sound of his voice and a bright-eyed pug-face looked in his direction.

"Shhh," I said gently, "you'll frighten it."

It was a bat.

When I'd turned up at playschool with the girls that morning the play-leaders were waiting for me. They'd found a bat on the ground and asked if I could do something with it. I followed them outside to find the hapless creature crawling along the gravel outside the front door. It was in serious danger of being trodden on, so I picked it up.

It's illegal to disturb or otherwise interfere with wild bats in Ireland without a special license, but handling grounded or injured bats to help them is okay. I checked this one over as best I could and it didn't appear to have any obvious injuries. As I was handling it anyway, I thought it would be a great opportunity for the kids to get a closer look at of one of Ireland's most fascinating creatures. There are nine species of bat in Ireland, all of them harmless. They emerge at night to feed on the swarms of nocturnal insects that would otherwise run rampant. This particular one was a brown long-eared bat.

One or two of the children were afraid at first, already influenced by an all-too-common adult prejudice. They soon overcame their fear though, and took it in turns to get a really good look at the bat. Once everyone had seen it I took the bat outside and placed it in a shady crevice in a nearby tree. The children then spent the morning talking about bats and making bat models out of toilet rolls and black cardboard. The bat must have recovered and flown back to its roost, because it was gone when I picked the girls up three hours later.

All of this highlights the fact that children are not naturally afraid of animals. They learn their fear of bats, spiders, insects and other creatures from their parents and other sources. The girls, for example, have a nursery rhyme CD which mentions how scary spiders are between Miss Muffet and Incy Wincie… I can't help wondering why?

Until they started playschool the girls were fascinated by all creepy crawlies. Woodlice were there favourites and they would often roam the garden re-housing woodlice from one place to another. Spiders were popular as well, and if they spotted one in the house they always wanted me to let it crawl on their hand before putting it outside.

One day though, not long after starting at playschool, they came running into the room shouting "We're afraid at the spider Dad, we're afraid at the spider"! I was surprised, but soon figured out that they were picking up this negative response from their peers in playschool. Now I try to actively counteract these negative influences and keep the girls as enthusiastic as possible about the little beasties they find around the garden and in the hedgerows.

If we lived in Australia, tropical South America or even in the United States then maybe there'd be more reason to teach our children to be wary of creepy crawlies, but the most dangerous things in your average Irish garden are the noxious chemicals that we put there. We're rearing the future custodians of our natural world here. Wouldn't it be a shame for them to grow up harbouring the same unfounded prejudices as our generation?