When the Athenaeum Hotel was opened in 1881, there were more than 10,000 brown bats on Chautauqua’s grounds. They were so much part of Chautauqua’s culture that even the wooden fences around the hotel’s porches were decorated with cutouts shaped like bats. Today, only a few bats are left – usually only one is seen at a time, dipping and weaving over Chautauqua Lake in the evening. The reason: a disease called WNS – White Nose Syndrome, which has reduced New York state’s brown bat population by 90 per cent. Some bat populations are surviving, but extinction is a definite possibility. In any event, Chautauqua’s bats will always be remembered, as long as the Athenaeum’s porch fences remain. In this image I include three of those bat cutouts, their pointed wings rhythmically repeated by the yellow flower petals that rise towards them.