Illustrated postcard mailed in 1907 and a bat stamp from Latvia

Here are a pair of items for which the only connection is that they're from postcards — mailed 106 years apart.

Up first is this comic postcard, which was postmarked in August 1907 in San Antonio, Texas.

The title of the postcard is "I AM LONESONE, BUT HAPPY!" The cursive note, written on the front in this case, states:

"No girls around that I know of however - the quietest Sunday I have spent in a long time. Happy [indecipherable]."

Any guesses on what's written after the word "Happy"?

The postcard is copyright 1906, by V.O.H.P. Co. I haven't been able to discover what those initials stand for. The card was mailed to someone named Jerome in Houston, Texas.

Here's a closer look at this three illustrated children. That fella in the middle could be avatar-worthy.

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Meanwhile, here's another selection from the gallery of Neat Things Received Through Postcrossing. It's a spooky stamp from Latvia featuring a bat. Specifically, Barbastella barbastellus.

The card was mailed to me by Regina in Latvia, who added in a short note that "there are a lot of Jugendstyle [Art Nouveau] buildings in the capital city [Riga]."

The barbastelle is a rare European bat that appears to have its greatest numbers in the United Kingdom. They are found in Latvia, though, according to this somewhat dense summary of a short academic paper published in 2010:

"Until the middle of the 1990s, in Latvia there were only a few historical records of single hibernating animals found in caves (2) and in a cellar (Petersons & Vintulis, 1998). During the study on the migration of bats at the western coast of the Baltic Sea a mass capturing of bats was carried out during the autumn seasons of 1985-1992 (Petersons, 2004). Barbastelles, although making up only 0.6% (9 ind.) of all captured bats, were registered at the time of their regular migration over the SW coast of the Baltic Sea. This let us suggest that a summer population of this species should occur in Latvia, probably in the SW part of the country (Petersons & Vintulis, 1998)."

The stamp itself was published in Latvia in 2008, as part of a set of four bat stamps. You can find out more about it on this Universal Postal Union page.