going batty

When we were up in Townsville, we spent a lot of time sitting on the back porch (clothed!). The night noises were so very different from those at home. The geckos barking on the wall as they chased biddies, the cane toad making disgusting cane toad noises, the tree frogs chirruping, the palm fronds rasping together in the breeze and some restless birds chittering and flapping in and out of the trees.

Or, we thought they were birds.

When I managed to get a closer look, I realised we where hosting a flying fox party. They had found a bunch of ripe fruit in one of the neighbour's palms and were having a feast.

It was at about this time that I discovered an interesting thing about bats and cameras. They just don't go together. You can't aim at something you can't see! And, if you do happen to fluke it and capture the creature, the flash makes the eyes the only thing visible.

After many tries, this is all I managed to take.

(This is what you would be seeing if I was a half-way decent photographer....

but I'm not so I had to steal that one.)

Anyway, the reason I am waffling on about fruit bats is because of an incident that happened to night. Which was a repeat of something that happened on Sunday.

We were just about to go to bed. I was in the bedroom and the man was in the bathroom. They were the only two lights on in the house. Suddenly, what I thought was a big moth swooped past my head. I followed the movement and realised we had a little mouse bat chasing moths around the room.

We flapped towels around to shoo it out and it headed straight out the back door.

We get a few of them around, particularly when the Bogongs hatch. We have never had one in the house before (other than a small orphaned one my neighbour vacuumed up because it scared her). It was quite a buzz.

I don't know if it was the same fella, but I had a wee visitor just a while ago. I was catching up on some diary buddies and, whoosh, there he was doing boglaps round the room.

Maybe the aircon disorients their radar or something but, for whatever reason, I rather like having the odd bat drop in.