Our
bat invasion of '09 reminded me of an earlier adventure we had with bats. I wrote up an article and it was recently published in a magazine - so now I can share it with you here.
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My first close encounter with bats was in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. Tunnels built by Japanese soldiers during the war had, many years later, become the perfect bat cave.
While we were exploring the tunnels, Mr X discovered a chute dropping down to another level. There was a bit of light filtering up through the chute. Some locals with us confirmed the lower tunnel had an exit out to the creek, fifty metres away. So we decided to slide down the chute and exit the tunnels that way. A 2-inch coating of mud in the chute, made sliding down very easy.
“Woohoo! This is fun,” yelled Mr X.
“It’s like being in an Indiana Jones movie,” I called out.
But when we landed in the lower tunnel to a flurry of batwings, we realised what we’d been sliding in was not mud!
Grateful for my female excuse to panic, I waved my arms around madly, trying to bat the bats off. “Aahhh! Get off me, get off me,” I shrieked. My screams bounced off the walls, as I lurched toward the literal light at the end of the tunnel.
Perhaps my screaming threw the bats’ sonar systems out of whack. Their navigation seemed to be very poor, as it felt like every single one of them flew directly into contact with me. Or perhaps they were attacking me on purpose.
My imagination went into overdrive. I saw newspaper headlines flash before my eyes;
Bat bites disfigure woman’s face;
Bat attack fells two Australians in Rabaul;
Rabies check all clear after bat attack.
Suddenly, I no longer wanted to be in an Indiana Jones movie. My distress level moved up a notch to hysteria. “Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh!”
Mr X shone the torch in my face and commanded in a very stern voice, “Shut up!”
“But they won’t stop flying into me,” I shrieked.
He replied in a very calm voice, “Just stand still and be quiet.”
Apparently my screaming and flapping around was disturbing the bats! His advice was to stop and drop, until the bats settled down. “Bats like to hang,” he explained. “So if we sit on the ground and be quiet, they will settle down, and go back to hanging off the ceiling. Then we can quietly walk out of the tunnel.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” I sobbed.
“Why not?”, he asked.
“Because there’s bat poo all over the floor.”
Grabbing my hand in the dark, my husband simply said, “Why would that bother you?” As he shone the torch all over us, I could see we were already covered in bat poo. What we had assumed was mud in the tunnels, was actually the bat colony’s sewerage system.
“Ewwwww . . . a ha a ha . . . ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” Hysteria turned to hilarity as we stumbled out of the tunnel and into the light.
Which brings me to my most recent bat encounter. At bedtime last night, I was turning off all the lights in our house. There was only one light left on—an up-light floor lamp—when I saw a shadow flit across the lounge-room ceiling.
“Open the doors,” I called out to Mr X. “There’s a bird in the house.”
Then the shadow flitted past again. “Oh, no!” I shrieked, “It’s a bat!”
We were both so busy running around opening all the external doors, neither of us thought to watch and see if the bat flew out. The next half hour was spent searching the house for any sign of the unwelcome creature, to no avail.
Finally we went to bed, making sure the sheets were pulled up tight around our faces.
“Oh well, if it’s still inside, at least we won’t get any mosquito bites,” said ever-positive Mr X. “One bat can eat up to 600 mosquitoes an hour.”
“Great!” I sighed. “How many humans can they bite in an hour?”
