Bats, you don't think about bats, do you? Not unless you're a bit of a batfan or the sort of person that keeps stuffed wildlife under your bed, or wears a compass round your neck when you go out to the shops and that. Tonight though, at work, I was helping to run a bat walk and we saw a ton of them over the ponds on Hampstead Heath (which is where I often work, fact fans. I love that job). We had a bit of help, in the form of Bat Detectors. Unfortunately, Bat Detectors are not black-macintoshed men with dark glasses and in-ear walkie talkies with a good line in locating flying mammals. Nor are they a fictitious piece of equipment used by The Joker in the Batman comics. I haven't made them up, though; there actually are real life gadgets called Bat Detectors. You can buy them. If you have 80 quid that is. They pick up the echo-location noise of the bats in the vicinity (vicinity - get me with the detective-lingo), which, depending on the type of bat detected, can sound like anything from a clicky noise to the sound of a particularly wet fart. There were about 15 of us on this walk including two spellbindingly enthralled 10 year old boys. The dusk falling over the pond, the last vestiges of light in the western sky, the faint outlines of the bats darting over the pond and the detectors making noises like a flatulent man in a bath made me ever such a little bit sad to leave my job, my familliar life and, would you believe it, London.
But it also made me remember that I'm bound to see shitloads of bats on the canal.
We leave in a little over two days. I am slightly bricking it.
Awww bless ((((Debs))))
don't brick it - you two are gonna have a great time
Posted by: toast | July 08, 2007 at 04:08 PM
Don't fear the bat. Not in this country anyway. Maybe in South America, where they are ferocious rabid beasts, but the British bat is a mild-mannered individual which prefers to sip tea and eat cucumber sandwiches. The other good thing about them is they eat midges, which really are bastards.
anyway, so yeah - what toast said! have an ace time, all the best xxx
Posted by: Polly | July 09, 2007 at 12:16 PM
I'm dead excited for you both! You'll have a great time being water-hippies (which are different to hippos) befriending bearded boaters and exchanging stories of lock navigation and wild encounters of the natural kind.
Looking forward to catching up with you, which shouldn't be hard as you'll only be moving at 4mph.
Lxx
Posted by: Lou | July 10, 2007 at 12:14 PM