Bat N

A call from "Fritz at Bluescope" told me he'd found a baby bat in the office, so he'd put it in a box for me. When I arrived I was handed a printer paper box, the sort that holds 5 reams of paper. I opened it and saw a tiny brown fuzzy thing huddled in a corner. He was another adult little forest bat.

"Nick" is not as bitey as Maddie, but he is much more vocal. He'll quiet down a little with more handling, but at the moment he's peeved at being handled, weighed, the general unfairness of it all and I'm In A Bag, Dammit! I'll set up a tent for him later.

He weighs 4 grams which is a little on the light side. I'll feed him up and let him go with Maddie. At the moment it looks like the end of this week is a tentative Release Night.

Streetwalk of Death By Pointy Teeth.

I heard an extraordinary noise from the front of the house. It started out as a low moan. "mrooooooooooooowr!"

"What the bloody hell is that?" I thought as I looked through the windows into the front yard. There was nothing there except for the fluffy black tomcat. He was staring into the bushes that mark the border between our yard and the lower neighbour's. The cat looked fluffier than normal, and he was really stirred up. "Mroooooooooowr!" he went, and he was answered by a deeper, rumbling growl. Something grey moved in the shadows.

A huge grey tomcat was moving forward. I think he was actually in the process of taking over the black cat's territory and the reigning tom didn't like it, but he wasn't going to have any say in it; the new cat was twice his size.

Black tom moved backward, and the grey tom moved forward. "Any moment now black cat will run," I thought. "And he'll have the crap beat out of him." I was a bit sad, really. Black Tom had provided many moments of amusement for the dogs. I would be sort of sad to see him go.

Sure enough, the black cat broke. He screamed across the front yard with the grey cat following. He zigged, zagged, then in a great leap bounded over the side gate into my yard. The grey cat followed close behind.

I heard Polly and Scruffy bark once, each. The black cat sailed back over the gate. The grey cat didn't follow, but I could trace his progress by listening to the excited yelping of the dogs. There was a loud thud of something hitting the aluminium fence around the back yard, then the collie in the yard behind ours began chasing something.

The black tom settled down on the warm bricks of the driveway to soak up some rays, his ears flicking as another dog in another yard began barking excitedly.

Size isn't everything when you have home-ground advantage.

Dogs-3, Black tom-1, New tom-0

Nick bat

Nick's feeding time went well. His protests changed from "HATE YOU! I bite you hard! YOU DIE! KILL! KILL! KILL!" at the start to "You were somewhat tardy bringing that last meal worm to me. I shall complain to the management," at the end. He will be a lot nicer bat to handle than Maddie is. He settled right in to being handled, and felt comfortable enough to wipe his face on my hand between worms. Afterward he did a few wing stretches then went to sleep.

Say "awwww."