Down in a cave with bats, a microphone, and you

I spent the better part of Thursday deep underground, in a cave under a limestone escarpment near Albany.

We crawled for a couple of hours through the darkness, shimmying on our bellies at times.

There were two brief patches where we could stand upright. I never thought I’d feel so grateful for a few extra inches of headroom.

Complicating matters was the fact that the cave is also a creekbed. We were sloshing through snowmelt that was sluicing down from the woods in daylight up above.

The objective was to inspect and tally bats, part of “white nose syndrome” research that continues around the Northeastern US.

I’m telling this story with a very particular motive: to remind you about our upcoming pledge drive.

How do these two thing connect?

Put bluntly, there are very few public radio stations in the country that can afford to have a reporter spend a day underground rooting around after sick bats.

It’s too expensive, too time-consuming, and (yes) too risky.

(Did I mention that I’m so sore this morning that I keep startling my dog Sara with my groans?)

When I do in-depth work like this — or when David Sommerstein spends a day working on a story up on the St. Lawrence River, or when Todd Moe and Joel Hurd orchestrate a complicated instudio music event — it’s because of you.

Even $20 or $40 a year can give us that extra bit of freedom to really dig after a story.

You provide those extra few inches of headroom that let us stand up and look around and sort out what’s really going on.

So take a minute today and go to our Support page and make a donation.

When you tune in next week and hear the incredibly cool sounds from that bat cave, you’ll know that you made it happen.