Chapter 29
Fruit Bats and Butterfly Dust
“Jane! Bring a sheet!” I screamed up the stairs.
“Mom, I’ll throw one down to the landing! I’m not coming downstairs!” she shouted back, her voice laced with panic.
“Aaah!”
Patrick was actively jumping from couch to couch in the living room, ducking and weaving to avoid the dark wings flapping through the air.
“Son, stay down low! Stay still and he’ll leave you alone!” his father shouted, standing firmly in the kitchen doorway.
Patrick ducked quickly, wedging himself into the tight space between the armchair and the couch. This sudden bat extraction had turned into a full family-team effort.
A white sheet hit the landing between the floor levels. I lunged after it, totally overreacting to the presence of our flying intruder. Like a giant flag, the fabric unfurled between me and Robert. The bats in Panama were actually fruit bats, which were considerably larger than standard vampire bats. We knew they were totally vegetarian, but even as adults, we had to work incredibly hard not to appear completely terrified in front of the kids.
Looking back, I’m sure the bat was just as traumatized by our screaming as we were by its wings. There is nothing quite like a tropical flying mammal to completely obliterate any illusion of parental authority you think you have.
“You take that corner!” I yelled to Robert. I had originally learned this specific technique back in Germany when I was trying to shoo angry bees out of my open apartment windows.
“I’ve got it! Let me get it up high!” Robert responded. He quickly wrapped the fitted corners of the sheet around the end of a broom handle. That gave enough height to our moving cloth wall to walk the bat right back out the open front door.
Patrick followed safely behind our defensive line. “Yes! It’s working! Jane, you can come down now!” I shouted toward the stairs.
No answer.
“It’s safe now, Jane,” her dad added.
“No, thank you. I’m good up here,” her muffled voice floated down.
I gathered up the sheet for the dirty clothes hamper and watched through the screen as the bat flapped away toward the carport light, darting off after realizing there weren’t any mango trees there. It was eighty degrees outside, but I had the total shivers.
A few days later, we found ourselves sitting in the base emergency room. The ER certainly saw its fair share of the Jackson family, but this time it was Patrick’s turn.
“I don’t know what happened,” I explained to the triage nurse. “His feet just started burning out of nowhere. I wouldn’t call them blisters, but he thinks his skin is on fire.”
“Had he been at the pool today?” the doctor asked, stepping into the cubicle.
“Earlier today, yes. We came straight here from there.”
“Patrick, I’m Dr. Kims,” the man said kindly.
“Hello,” Patrick replied. His voice was shaky, but he didn’t have any tears in his eyes.
“It’s good to meet you. Could you tell me… how did you jump into the pool today? Did you dive? Do a cannonball?”
“No, I just used the edge and went in feet first,” Patrick explained. “They don’t let you dive from the sides over there.”
“Thank you, Patrick,” Dr. Kims turned to the counter. “I’ve got a specific cream for you to put on the area.”
I frowned, completely puzzled. “Do you know what caused this?”
“Butterflies, indirectly.”
“We haven’t been around any butterflies today,” I countered.
“But the butterflies have toxins and pollen on their wings,” Dr. Kims explained. “They land on the pool water, and those chemicals wash right off their wings and lay in a layer on top of the water.”
“He swims all the time,” I said, protective maternal instincts kicking in. “This has never happened before.”
“They are supposed to skim the top of the pool just before they open for the day,” the doctor noted.
“So, this is common? My kids have been swimming in butterfly dust?”
“Not really. The pool skimmers usually clear it all out, and the butterflies stay away from the surface once people start splashing around. But from the looks of the waiting room out there, I’ve got a lot more kids coming in with the exact same thing today.”
“Wow, Mom. Butterfly burns?” Patrick muttered, staring at his feet.
It was a bizarre tropical paradox. In Panama, the creatures of the night, the scary, flapping bats, turned out to be harmless fruit-eaters just looking for a way out. But the beautiful, delicate butterflies? They left an invisible layer of poison that could scorch your skin.
“It looks that way, Patrick,” I said, leaning over him. “Does the cream help any yet, son?”
“Not yet.”
“Patrick, it’s not the butterflies themselves,” the doctor corrected my phrasing as he capped the tube. “It’s the dust on their wings. It washes off when they land on the water.” He handed the tube over to me and got down right at Patrick’s eye level. “You wear a helmet when you ride your bike, right? And you chew your food carefully when you eat. Asking if they skimmed the pool is just like that. You shouldn’t stop doing something fun just because you have to think about being safe first.”
Patrick shook his head yes, a small smile finally breaking through his dazed expression.
Dr. Kims stretched his hand out in my direction, offering the medication. “Sign out at the desk, and you can take that tube home with you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Kims.”
“Swim safe,” he nodded on his way out.
I appreciated the doctor’s optimism, but I couldn’t exactly picture myself marching up to a teenage lifeguard to demand a chemical analysis of the butterfly-to-chlorine ratio before letting my son do a cannonball.