Sitting on the float of the Palisade Boat club in Yonkers, several members and friends were relating vacation adventures of this season. Fish, snakes and other reptiles had been favored in their innings. Bear, deer, birds, canoe upsets and rescues from drowning also had received veracious attention, when former Commodore William J. Lord of the Yonkers Yacht club moved his chair to the edge of the group.
    “Friends and fellow citizens,” said “I don’t expect any of you to tell, but it doesn’t make much difference to me, for the narrative is true. Most of you know,” the former commodore went on, “that I put in three weeks at Watkins Glen, on Seneca lake. One evening, shortly after sunset, I took a pole and line and went down to the water. The hook was baited with a salmon fly, and I thought some kind of fish would strike at it. I was disappointed. After making probably 100 or more casts at different points in the lake, I was getting discouraged. Just as I had resolved to go back to the hotel. I made another cast. I watched to see and hear the faint splash in the water. It did not come. The fly did not touch the lake. And not a tree or other obstacle for it to strike was within 500 yards. I was amazed.
    “Suddenly the line straightened. Next came a series of jerks, short and long pulls. The line sawed up and down and from side to side. I had a bite in mid-air. But no fish of my experience ever behaved in this fashion after taking a hook. For possibly two minutes the tugging continued, when the pole was twitched out of my hands and I saw it go sailing inland at a height of perhaps 30 feet. I followed the fishing tackle. Soon it caught in a clump of bushes and there the outfit remained. Seizing the pole at the butt, I began to wind up the line on the reel. Nothing else moved for some seconds, but when it became taut there was a commotion among the leaves. Then I found that I had safely secured my catch. My prisoner was a cheiropter of good size. The fishline was twisted about a twig and held the captive fast. And there it was hanging. It had swallowed the fly and also the hook, it had mistaken for the real thing while in the air.”
    “Commodore,” said a young lady, meaking the abysmal silence of the listening group, “what is a cheiropter?”
    “A cheiropter,” the commodore replied, “is a bat—a bat that eats insects.”

From— Iowa State Bystander. (Des Moines, Iowa), 08 Nov. 1912. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.