Like I said, there were bats up the wazoo at the Royal Botanic Gardens. I was all like, “Begonias? More like BOREgonias,” because the real sights weren’t the plants but what was hanging in them—and they were everywhere, despite the groundkeepers attempts to discourage roosting with this inflatable man (which frightened the hell out of me, but not so much of the bats).
Flying Foxes aren’t the kind of bats that you find in your attic and your dad beats to a pulp with a tennis racket. No, these suckers are big—with three foot-long wingspans and faces akin to that of a pet you might see popping out of Paris Hilton’s purse. They were sleeping, mostly—being nocturnal creatures and all—but they were restless sleepers, occasionally waking up for a quick flight or to go bat-shit crazy on their hanging neighbor.
I waited patiently for dusk to fall so that I could see them roll out of bed, but some asshole prematurely woke up a bunch of them by loudly clapping and making obnoxious noises, as you can see/hear in the video above. I was hoping he’d get dive-bombed but no luck.
