This Is Bat Country!

there are bats here.

they're really big.

i'm reminded of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where a very coked-up Johnny Depp freaks out on a lonely stretch of desert highway and starts taking swipes at imaginary bats with a flyswatter.

there really are bats here though. i'm not having a Johnny Depp moment. they fly outside and around our building after sunset - which is usually around 7 pm. they're usually pretty high up in the air though, so it's hard to say how big they really are. i'd say they're of average size, on the bat scale. i don't know. it's not like i'm a bat expert. they don't really bother us at night when we're out walking. i have no idea where they roost or what they're doing at night - it's not like we have a cave on campus - but my scholarly guess is they're doing bat things.

so tonight around 10 pm i was walking back to my building from the gym when out of the corner of my eye i saw a flapping shadow to my left. my mind registered a thought, something along the lines of 'probably the shadow of another one of those batty bats flapping around.' but my instinct was to turn towards the shadow, partly out of curiosity, partly to see if the light wasn't just playing tricks on me.

and there was a bat. a really really big bat. like - dishtowel size - flapping around about 5 feet off the ground. and right as i looked at it -



- the bat flew right towards me. and my mind registered another thought, something along the lines of 'oh crap a bat's flying at my head.' and this time my instinct was in line, and naturally i ducked and scrunched up my eyes and basically curled up in the fetal position with a gasp - sounding not unlike the little boy i am - and when the bat was about 10 feet away it flew up up up and away.

it's actually quite scary when a bat flies right at you in real life. it's nothing like what i had always imagined it to be.