CHITTER-CHATTER
For the past hour or two we’ve been hearing a strange chattering out in the garden. “What the hell’s that?” I wondered. “Some kind of crazy bird?” “Fruit bats!” said the Snook. Instantly we both realized that our beautiful papaya tree in the backyard, the one with the lovely big fruit on it… is being feasted upon this very minute by these little fellas. (There’s an audio file there if you want to hear what they sound like.) I suppose it’s all right; the Snook doesn’t much like papaya anyway. I just hope they don’t poop seeds all over the place.
eileen
February 12, 2008 — 12:47 am
Cool! I love bats. Funny that they’re called Flying Foxes in Australia.
Kris
February 12, 2008 — 6:46 am
Only the big fruit-eating ones are. I guess it’s to differentiate them from the tiny VAMPIRIC bug-eaters. I’d have gone with something more like “Flying House Cats” myself, given the size of some of them…
Bex
February 12, 2008 — 9:52 am
Hehe, first the Australian Monkey… now the Crazy Birds…
(make sure you clean up their poo – its really acidic and can eat the paint off cars, as The Boi found out..)
Nicole
February 12, 2008 — 12:43 pm
keep an eye on the little buggers, they can do serious damage to your trees (have a look at what they have done to the botanic gardens in syd)
Kris
February 12, 2008 — 12:48 pm
Well, how do you keep them off your tree if you don’t want them there? Is there some sort of scarecrow or bat repellant that’s supposed to work?
northview
February 12, 2008 — 5:52 pm
You need to investigate scare or “cherry” guns! 🙂 Seriously you could try netting to keep them off.
Nicole
February 13, 2008 — 11:22 am
probably a combination of both would work. hey you could have a party with water guns and those little cap guns and try to scare them off (you and a group of friends sitting around drinking cocktails and scaring the bats??hmmm sounds fun, can i come?)
Kris
February 13, 2008 — 11:41 am
I don’t actually mind them, other than that their chatter woke me up in the night. I don’t have a car for them to poo on, and those papayas were too high for us to get to anyway.