By Rich Bitterman
Bats and the Ozarks—they go together like creekbeds and limestone, like twilight and hush. You don’t have to go looking for them. They’ll find you. Sometimes curled up inside a shoe, other times fanning out from beneath the eaves of your neighbor’s house.
Last summer, one of my neighbor’s guests slid their foot halfway into a shoe and felt something soft and alive pressed against their toes. A bat. Curled like a question mark, half-dreaming in the dark. My neighbor’s been sealing up his attic ever since, patch by patch, chasing a creature that was here long before our asphalt and siding.
But here’s what most folks miss: if you watch the weather radar in summer just after sunset, you might catch a flicker—something that looks like a storm blooming and vanishing in the blink of an eye. The untrained eye says rain. But it’s not rain.
It’s thousands of bats, lifting off in unison from the deep lungs of the Ozarks. A roost ring, they call it. A burst of life, caught by a beam of radar, as if even the satellites above are startled into noticing what God has hidden in the hills.
I live near caverns where these creatures sleep—Marvel Cave being the crown jewel, carved under Silver Dollar City like a sanctuary forgotten by time. I’ve been drawn to places like that for as long as I can remember. My fascination with bats goes back to when I was four years old.
My parents were remodeling an old funeral home into a house in Woodburn, Iowa. (Yes, it was as spooky as it sounds.) One night, my mom let out a scream that split the silence like a church bell at midnight. A bat had found its way into our living room. I remember ducking behind the couch, heart pounding and wide-eyed, as my dad stalked across the living room with a blanket like he was in some slow-motion wildlife documentary. Each time the creature swooped, my mom shrieked again, as if some ghost had returned for judgment. But Dad caught it. Tucked it in a mason jar with holes punched in the lid so we could take a good look.
I was hooked. And ever since, I’ve dragged Joy to just about every cave tour in the Ozarks. She humors me, bless her, even when the path narrows and the air turns damp.
One memory stays close: a hike we took as a family on the Lost Valley Trail near Ponca, Arkansas. It ends at a bluff, and at the top—past the ferns and the wet stone—you’ll find a cave. The entrance hides behind a silver curtain of water, where the rock glistens and the air changes—cooler, quieter, like you’ve stepped out of one world and into another.
Back then, I had more knees than sense, and crawling through a hundred feet of muddy rock felt like fun, not foolishness. But when you finally reach the waterfall room, something holy happens. The ceiling opens up into a kind of cathedral. The mist clings to your skin. Water spills from a hidden source above. And there, stuck to the ceiling like living stalactites, the bats barely twitched, perfectly content to ignore us.
They are the only true flying mammals on earth. Creatures designed by God to live between darkness and light, to sleep upside-down and fly upright, to feast on the very pests that pester us most. They’re misunderstood, maligned, even feared.
But they matter more than most folks realize.
And now? Missouri surveys tell us many once-common bat species are fading. The quiet ones are vanishing. The ones who keep the mosquitoes at bay—the real bloodsuckers of the Ozarks. One bat eats its weight in mosquitoes every single night. Every night. And still, folks wrinkle their nose at them, not realizing they are allies in the shadows.
It makes me think: how often do we overlook what is doing us the most good, just because it comes without fanfare? Just because it flies at dusk and not dawn? Just because it whispers instead of roars?
The bats preach a quiet sermon. One about unseen work. About patience. About doing the good that no one claps for.
They remind me of faithful saints in small churches. The ones who show up early to make coffee. Who clean the bathrooms no one notices. Who pray through the night and never post about it. They’re the bats of the body—humble, hidden, holy.
So the next time you see a flicker on the radar or hear a flutter just beyond the porchlight, pause.
Because sometimes the most powerful things in the world don’t shout.
They fly softly in the dark and leave the world better than they found it.
To learn more about my Ozark writings click here.
Recommended Resource: If you’re studying the Psalms, you won’t want to miss my in-depth review of The Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon. This timeless masterpiece unpacks the Psalms with rich theological insight, making it essential for devotion, sermon prep, or deep Bible study. Read the full review here.
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