Poll of the Day > its a tiny dog with wings

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgMseckYGtE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZoBuOsQ56U

These ones are winged cotton balls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_yduy_0-4k

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Many bats are super cute. Love videos of them eating nanners and grapes.
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Gaawa_chan posted...

These ones are winged cotton balls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_yduy_0-4k

https://youtu.be/sKsDlnLL0hs

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Sky puppers

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Man, I wish I had a cute bat story. But my bat story is not particularly pleasant, let alone cute:

Shortly after moving to Binkolo, maybe my third or fourth night, I heard a scratching sound on my ceiling. Or, rather, in my ceiling. Basically the houses there have a small space between the ceiling board and the actual roof. A perfect cozy little space for critters. It escalated to lots of scratching over the next few days and soon I was hearing weird rodent squeeks. At first I thought it was mice, because when I was still living in our training town of Port Loko I had found and killed a mouse in my room.

I told the principal at my school (my boss) the next day, as he was also in charge of the property. He said "oh don't worry about it, it's just bats. Everyone's house here has bats."

Well the situation escalated to where I was hearing them scurrying around in roof constantly. There was one spot on the floor that I'd have to sweep multiple times a day because their feces collected there very quickly (there was a hole in in the ceiling there). I finally told the Peace Corps admin and they freaked the fuck out. Like, the next day they took me to the capital city where I stayed nearly three weeks while my principal was supposed to coordinate "fixing" the house to Peace Corps standard. (Peace Corps paid for it all btw, he just needed to coordinate the work)

When I finally got to come back to Binkolo. Nothing had been done. I told my principal they'd relocate me if nothing happened, and neither of us wanted that, so he finally got some people to fill all the holes that led into the ceiling from the outside with cement. We figured that the bats would have no way in or out and would slowly starve. I'd only have to listen to their death cries for as long it took them to perish!

Well, that's not exactly what happened. Remember the hole I mentioned in the ceiling where their poop would come through? That wasn't the only hole. Two nights later I'm grading tests and all of a sudden I see a quick flash by my eye. Then another. And I notice three bats are just circling around me. Then a swarm. I killed one, but it turned out to be too much for me to handle on my own. Thankfully Sierra Leone is communal and as soon as I asked my neighbor for help like six dudes with machetes came into my house and just started going HAM slapping bats like crazy. Had to have killed at least 30 that night. It was enough that no more appeared. That night, at least.

It became apparent they were coming in through one room which had major ceiling damage. It was a huge colony, I'd guess at least 300 of them, so at this point my solution was to just close the door to that room, lock it, and say fuck it. And that's what I did. Dealt with the bats the rest of my time there. They must've been getting out to get food somehow, or they had become a cannibalistic colony that reproduced quick enough to sustain their feeding (unlikely as these were herbivore bats). Anyway, that's my bat story. I also had encounters with snakes and scorpions in that house, as well cockroaches on the daily. One of the few things I do not miss about living there.

I love Bats!

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