Some animals are universally loved and that’s without taking into account the domestic pet variety. Bush babies and koalas and pandas come into the mix from the off, as do baby anything. Mind you, it’s hard to envisage anyone going “ahhhh” over a newborn snake or rat or lizard.
But, of course, these animals have every right to exist (although preferably not in our immediate vicinity) and no doubt play their part in the food chain. Humans are the problem and specifically, by all accounts, our evolutionary predisposition to warm to creatures with features we find appealing: fur, big eyes and a facial expression we can somehow relate to.
For the most part, that’s why sharks get such a bad rap. They’re basically supremely efficient meat-eating machines and apparently, as a species, we find it hard to relate to their seemingly expressionless existence.
Which brings me to my new-found favourite animal. It is leathery, comes out at night, in no way evokes a yearning to touch or pet or cuddle and lives in my local park. I give you the bat.
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During the summer, a neighbour organised a bat walk by the river. Conn, the neighbour in question, knows his bats and birds and pretty much everything else. He immediately dealt with that widely-held belief of bats loving hair – human hair – and how nothing can make their day, or rather night, more than to get entangled therein. This, it turns out, is a complete fallacy. Bats, sensible creatures that they are, have other priorities in life.
A bunch of us showed up at dusk, which was about 10pm that day, and walked along the river to where the bats, quite literally, hung out. I knew I was falling prey to the worst kind of stereotypes but still found myself mulling on that vague, ominous concept of bats looming in the night sky.
Minutes later, the Drumcondra version appeared. These animals – and it was the pipistrelle variety we were being exposed to that night – were as small as robins and yet vastly more nimble and agile. Apologies to all robins out there. There they were, fluttering and swooping and changing direction on a whim as they sensed or heard or intuited the movement of insects and moved in for the kill.
A friend once told me she was out in her garden, enjoying the strains of a concert coming from Croke Park, when something flittered by. She knew immediately that it was a bat and not a bird. I asked her how she could be so sure, to which she replied, matter-of-factly, that it was by the sound of its leathery wings beating in the air. She had grown up in the Donegal countryside, surrounded by bats, and knew one when she heard one.
I’m not sure if I could have distinguished, that evening, between the sound of a bat beating its wings and that of a bird doing the same thing. However, following our walk in the park, I was most definitely smitten and developed the zeal of the newly-converted when it came to our flying mammal relations.
When I told my story of those bats in the days and months following, it was the nodding and shrugging and sharing of similar experiences that surprised me most.
Over a lunch with some friends, I was told about a hot-press door being opened to find a small – and, in all probability, very happy – bat nestled in among the sheets and towels. Now, even though I have become a firm advocate for these strange, admirable creatures, I don’t necessarily want them in my house. Had it been me, I’m fairly confident the eviction of said bat would have ensued promptly.
And then I stayed over the holidays with my sister and brother-in-law in west Cork. Naturally enough, it didn’t take long for me to wax lyrical about my recent bat walk. “We have them here as well,” was the response. Sure enough, late in the evening in their garden and more specifically from a vegetation-covered embankment over to one side, those same sort of bats came forth, ducking and diving as they busied themselves with getting fed.
So let’s hear it for the bat. It doesn’t have fur. It doesn’t have big eyes. It doesn’t have the time of day for, well, the time of day. But it can hang upside down for extended periods, zip through the air in sharp, precise movements and hear in the oddest, strangest, most visceral way possible.
It is, in its own way, a wonder.
