Bats, Bison & Horses 01/22/21

O’Leano State Park, High Springs, Florida

The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth. ~ Genesis 9:18-19

(FYI – Shem was the father of the Semites aka Hebrews aka Jews. That’s where the term anti-Semitism comes from. Japheth fathered the Greeks, Russians, etc. Ham was the father of the Philistines, North Africa, southwestern Asia aka Middle East)

We entered Gator territory today in Gainesville, Florida.

When we were searching for things to do in the area, we came across information about two museums and bats on the University of Florida campus. We set out on the 30-minute drive to check it all out.

Unfortunately, we were unable to even consider looking at bats today, because we learned they don’t come out when the nights are cool, and tonight was supposed to be very cool. Here’s what we read about them on atlasobscura.com:

THE WORLD’S LARGEST OCCUPIED BAT houses are located on the campus of the University of Florida. Mostly populated by the Brazilian free-tailed bat, the bat house and barn are also home to Southeastern and Evening bats.
The original colony of bats was discovered after a fire destroyed Johnson Hall in 1987. The nearly 5,000 bats who had lived there then took up residence at several campus stadium locations. Though the musky odor of the bats and rain of guano during evening games didn’t please fans, it wasn’t until Governor Bob Martinez complained of the odor while attending an athletic event at Griffin Stadium that university officials decided something had to be done.
The first bat house was constructed in 1991. The stadiums were fitted with bat excluders, which allowed the bats to leave but not to return to roost. At first try, approximately 3,000 bats were caught in cages and relocated to the newly built bat house. Most left after only a night or two. In 1995, after years of using excluders at various campus locations and a variety of techniques to get the bats to stay at the house, it was discovered that what had been a small colony of mostly males bats had switched to a large colony of mostly females. Since then, the population has continued to increase. A second structure, the bat barn, was constructed in 2010.

The current population, estimated to be 300,000 bats, consumes more than two tons of insects a night. Observers are encouraged to come on warm, calm nights to watch the 10-20 minute show as the skies cloud with bats. Viewers are warned that the bats often dip low to gather insects that have been attracted by carbon dioxide-laced exhalations … and to beware of falling urine and guano.

Seeing something like this is on our bucket list! How awesome would that be?!?

Their Museum of Natural History and Art Museum are next to each other and are free, except for the $4 parking fee. We found everything to be well done and clean. The history museum focused a lot on the people who used to be found in Florida, and also skeletons (including, but not limited to, dinosaurs!) – both real and man-made to make up the exhibits. Interesting history on the Calusa people.

This guy is what greats you when you walk in the door.
Well, that, and a really nice security guard. : )

This entire room was made up of this landscape that included a cave you could walk through –
complete with artificial bats, stalactites, etc.

This was a combination of wax figures and mural painting.

We’ve not run across this game before.
Sounds like it required a lot of skill!

That’s the bridge we drove across last week – the one where we were admonished to watch for birds. Somewhere in that developed area is where we ate oysters. : )

This was a neat room.
They had bird sounds piped in while you walked around and looked at the various kinds in their habitat. (everything artificial, of course)

A Magnificent Frigatebird (that’s it’s real name!) and Pelicans in a treetop nest.
We’ve never seen pelicans in a nest before, but we did see some in a tree once, which just seemed weird. : )

This was a neat display – they put drawers in the wall, right within the display.
The drawers don’t have anything in them right now because of Covid. : (

We were surprised to see they had something this old! Pretty cool!

Did you notice he’s actually painted that black?
Wonder what they used?

Interesting that while not coinciding with actual Scripture,
they still believed in three persons who governed the world. . . .
Things that make you go, *hmmmmm . . . .*

I did the best I could with this picture. It was very, very dark. So is their belief in the afterlife.
From what little I understand of either, it seems the opposite of what Buddhists believe.

I tried to find out how this works, but for me, it was just a lot of mumbo jumbo.
Just looks like a regular button to me.

Did you read that last paragraph?
You should at least read the first sentence . . .
Remarkable!

Enter . . . the age of the fossils and bones!

I had to look this one up. Here’s what I found:
Gomphotheres are any members of the diverse, extinct taxonomic family Gomphotheriidae.
Gomphotheres were elephant-like proboscideans, but not belonging to the family Elephantidae.
They were widespread in North America during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, 12–1.6 million years ago. Yeah. That helped a whole lot. Ancient elephants? Like Wooly Mammoths and Mastedons?

It seems like it would be fun to try, but I’m not sure it’s for Blaine and I.
I think we’d get bored pretty quickly if we didn’t uncover something. : )

Remember when we saw the Giant Sloth skeleton in a State Park museum a few years ago?
Here’s another one!

Sometimes we just wonder where they come up with these things . . . .

. . . and how do they know what they looked like?
Disney’s Imagineers! lol!

This is supposedly a bear-dog going after a tiny horse.

This was new to us.
I didn’t get the title for a while . . . I’m a little slow sometimes. : )

There was a display of various shark jaws. This is a great white!

I was unable to get a good picture of the Mastodon because there were people milling about where I needed to stand. We didn’t feel like waiting for them to move, as it seemed they’d be there for a while.

Whoa!!! Those are some brave girls! Or young and stupid. You decide.

This is Albert’s skull. : )
He was a really big boy!

As with many art museums, there were some really strange pieces in here, and most of what wasn’t strange was Asian/Oriental or African in nature. I don’t recall any actual paintings, which we enjoy in an art museum, and not very many sculptures. Interesting though. You’ll see. Always makes us wonder who decides something is museum-worthy . . .

This was kinda neat. They had this African dance thing playing on the wall, and a huge mirror, so you could feel like you were actually there. : )

If you’re interested in learning something about culture, you really should zoom in and read this, but I warn you, the things we read about in this African section kinda creeped me out spiritually.

This goes with the picture below. I’ll try to do that with all the art pieces I have descriptions of.

Your guess is as good as mine. It was just painted on a blank section of wall. . . .

Not a photograph, it’s a picture of a garden outside. Pretty, huh?

I tried to find out what a ‘heave’ was. No luck.

Sculptures in Jade. These are all peaches.

This piece has a very interesting story!

They had a video playing of this dancer. I thought she was very graceful, but Blaine didn’t care much for it.

Well, no wonder it’s untitled.
What is it supposed to be??

Once we were done absorbing culture, we stopped for lunch at Tortilla Flats. It was good, but nothing I couldn’t have made at home. Then there were a couple of other stops to make to look for items we needed, but no success. We’ll have to look in the Ocala area; our next stop.

It was time to get some real exercise, and Blaine had located a great place for that – Sweetwater Wetlands State Park. It was a beautiful place with over 3-miles of wide path to walk on.

A few paces in, we came to this sign. . .

Now we were really excited!!!

Ha! We should’ve known better. There were none to be seen. Back home, I tried to look them up, and found that the horses were wild Florida Cracker horses, but the articles were from 2-3 years ago, and nothing mentioned them not being around anymore. And I uncovered nothing about bison here. Hmmmm . . . .

Here’s what we DID see: