If your interview subject tells you she goes home and eats half her body weight every night, it might be cause for concern.
Unless you're interviewing a particularly chatty cave myotis bat named Mindy who spends her summers at Kartchner Caverns State Park.
In a 10-minute audio clip, Mindy dishes on everything from what she eats (insects, not nectar) to if she bites (yes, if people missing brain cells try to catch her).
The clip is part of a natural- history curriculum for kindergartners through sixth-graders that's being offered free to schools, compliments of the non-profit Friends of Kartchner Caverns State Park.
Teachers can lead younger students through activities such as creating a cave or hunting for sloths. Older students can research humidity and minerals, for example.
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Friends director Lynn Perez-Hewitt said she didn't want a "cartoony, fluffy thing," but a way to communicate real scientific information to students. A mammalogist and wildlife biologist drafted the script.
Of course, bats don't really talk. Not even if you use a special translating machine to slow down the rapid, high-pitched clicks bats use for navigation.
Margaret Eriksson, an environmental lawyer, plays Mindy on the audio clip. Her daughter, Carmen, a first-grader at St Michael's Parish Day School who has performed in several musical-theater productions, does the interviewing.
The campaign comes as visitation to the caverns continues to drop. In January 2007, there were 16,119 visitors, compared with 15,271 last year and 13,461 at the start of 2009.
Parks spokeswoman Ellen Bilbrey said the curriculum helps fulfill the park's purpose and promise. "The cave was developed in a way so that it would be preserved for future generations, and the children are going home and educating their families and friends about conservation. If it takes the children to teach the parents, that's fine."
The 44-year-old Eriksson, who moved to Tucson from the comparative rain forest of Vancouver, British Columbia, five years ago, said she didn't know much about bats. And she certainly never expected, when she took a voice-over class for fun at Pima Community College, that it would lead to her channeling one — an activity that demanded a little acting direction. Bats, after all, could lend themselves to scary voices. Instead, she was told to aim for approachable and intelligent.
Carmen's teacher has played the clip for the class. The first-grader said she already knew a little about bats, which have suffered from bad PR in the past. "I knew they weren't harmful creatures and you shouldn't be scared of bats because they don't suck people's blood," she said, adding she thinks it's funny that they sleep all day, hanging upside down.
The mother-daughter duo have their first trip to Kartchner planned for Sunday.
Joanne Palmer, a facilitator for Los Ranchitos Elementary School, said she had a chance to listen to the clip last week, before the school's 145 fourth-graders took a field trip to the caverns, compliments of Friends.
"It's a nice little visualization for kids to learn information about bats," she said. "It piques the students' interest and hooks them in."
An interview is in the works now for Kartchner Caverns itself.
To Learn More
• Go to www.explorethecaverns. com to hear part of the interview with Mindy.
• Contact Friends of Kartchner Caverns State Park for a free curriculum CD on caves for your classroom.
• The non-profit also has some money available to help sponsor field trips for fourth-graders. Call 1-520-668-7707.
• Interested in volunteering at the caverns? Call the parks department at 1-602-542-4174 for more information.
