Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Lettuce get ready to rumble!

Flying foxes preparing to squabble over lunch.
The brawls these things got into while hanging by their feet from the ceiling were epic. Bobbi described them as looking like "cats fighting with umbrellas."

Batophobes would not dig these flying foxes, what with their >3' wingspans. It's amazing that critters with bodies the size of small dogs and wings spreading half a fathom weigh only three pounds or less.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

God: The Ultimate Design Engineer

Anonymous said...

12 gauge w/00. Flying rat problem solved

og said...

I love bats. We get them here all the time. One flew into the daughter's forehead a couple years back and then sat, stunned, on the sidewalk for about a half hour. The idea of being afraid of them never occurred to her and she wanted to try to keep it as a pet. I'd LOVE to have flying foxes here.

staghounds said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_epO8pUPz4

sobriant74 said...

We encourage them here in central O Hi O. It's so dang wet here most of the year that the skeeters can get bad quick and west Nile is all over. We have two bat boxes up and we try to enlighten our neighbors of the importance of bats ( and swallows).
When the Germans came in the 19th century they clear cut the forests and swamps , but the rain still falls and it still pools anywhere that doesn't drain. We see them flapping overhead in the evenings and they look like they are trying like hell to keep from falling to earth. Ungainly lil things, but they eat a lot of bugs.
On another note, if you haven't been to the columbus Zoo in the last 3 or 4 years they have made some big changes. And are adding a 100 acre savanna in 2014.

Jennifer said...

I have never gotten so excited about a salad.
I love the bats. Wish we had more of them around here.

Rey B said...

We are in the process of buying a place that is outside of city limits by enough to allow some shooting in the backyard. I already have a couple bat boxes waiting to be installed.

Robert said...

I'm fine with them as long as they stay outside. Have had several get into my house over the years.

Joe in PNG said...

My old town of Madang, PNG is pretty full of the schreechy flying foxes. As in trees with nearly every branch filled. But it was cool watching the clouds of bats the size of buzzards heading out in the tropical twilight.

Aesop said...

I prefer the fruit bats in Okinawa. With 5-6' wingspans, entertainment consisted of throwing citrus fruit from the messhall onto the roof of a storage shed to marinate in the near-tropical heat of the day, and draw the bats like a magnet after sunset.

The shed was right under a streetlamp, next to the main sidewalk from HQ to the barracks. So one could count upon some HQ clerk, travelling homeward after typing above and beyond the call after hours, to be coming down the path just as serial sorties of 6' Japanese fliedermaus Zeroes would be divebombing the shed, their size magnified under the overhead illumination, and squealing and shrieking in ferocious bat-lingo to properly intimidate the helpless oranges they were about to devour.

Followed by screams, panicked evasive maneuvers, and suitably soiled undergarments from the HQ folks, all of which was cheaper than cable TV, and far better entertainment from the adjacent barracks balcony.