219. Cool Creatures | Bats

I'll start with a story, which is my first encounter with bats.

Right after college, my wife and I were living in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

We went to teach at a small mission school way upcountry, and we were living on a kind of compound right outside of the village up on a hill, but it was surrounded by what they called the bush.

And just maybe two weeks into living there, we're trying to go to sleep one night, and the jungle is noisy already at nighttime.

But we heard this loud, like, honking sound that just kept us awake all night long.

The next day, we talked to some people about it, and they wondered and asked us to listen again and see whether we might hear it.

And that next night, we didn't hear anything.

But then the following night, the honking started up again.

My memory is correct.

It sounded something like a...

It was really loud.

Couldn't go to sleep with this going on.

And so I finally muster all the courage that I can and decide I'm going to go outside and take care of this thing.

So I go out, pick up a handful of stones, and just start throwing them into the bush where this honking sound is coming from, hoping that'll scare it away.

And it stops and then a second later something swoops down and actually brushes across my face and I scream and freak out and go yelling and running back into the house feeling at any minute there's going to be some taloned claw that picks me up and carries me away and feeds me to its children.

I try to reproduce the sound again for the other people who have been there for a while and they say, oh yeah, that's a fruit bat.

A fruit bat.

Okay.

Well, I was fairly scared and would like to say that I've never gone out into the bush at night again.

I think that story gets us closer to what I think a lot of people's experience with bats is, which is something ominous and eerie.

While you and I and Tish's family, and especially Gus, were pretty excited to see bats at Bracken Cave in Texas...

Are you excited to see the bats? Yeah! I'm really excited.

I think it's fair to say that not everyone would be excited to see bats, or maybe even think that bats are cool creatures.

Yeah, I mean, most people never see a bat.

I mean, you know, humans tend to run inside when it gets dark.

I'll start with a story, which is my first encounter with bats.

Right after college, my wife and I were living in Sierra Leone, West Africa.

We went to teach at a small mission school way upcountry, and we were living on a kind of compound right outside of the village up on a hill, but it was surrounded by what they called the bush.

And just maybe two weeks into living there, we're trying to go to sleep one night, and the jungle is noisy already at nighttime.

But we heard this loud, like, honking sound that just kept us awake all night long.

The next day, we talked to some people about it, and they wondered and asked us to listen again and see whether we might hear it.

And that next night, we didn't hear anything.

But then the following night, the honking started up again.

My memory is correct.

It sounded something like a...

It was really loud.

Couldn't go to sleep with this going on.

And so I finally muster all the courage that I can and decide I'm going to go outside and take care of this thing.

So I go out, pick up a handful of stones, and just start throwing them into the bush where this honking sound is coming from, hoping that'll scare it away.

And it stops and then a second later something swoops down and actually brushes across my face and I scream and freak out and go yelling and running back into the house feeling at any minute there's going to be some taloned claw that picks me up and carries me away and feeds me to its children.

I try to reproduce the sound again for the other people who have been there for a while and they say, oh yeah, that's a fruit bat.

A fruit bat.

Okay.

Well, I was fairly scared and would like to say that I've never gone out into the bush at night again.

I think that story gets us closer to what I think a lot of people's experience with bats is, which is something ominous and eerie.

While you and I and Tish's family, and especially Gus, were pretty excited to see bats at Bracken Cave in Texas...

Are you excited to see the bats? Yeah! I'm really excited.

I think it's fair to say that not everyone would be excited to see bats, or maybe even think that bats are cool creatures.

Yeah, I mean, most people never see a bat.

I mean, you know, humans tend to run inside when it gets dark.