Just Don't Bite Them
Lani Crooks
The jogger begins to slow down and look quizzically at us. Our focus is on the darkening sky over Turrella Reserve but we sense him standing there, a question forming on his lips.
“Wh...so what’s happening here?”
“We’re counting the bats. They fly every night around now.” This answer comes courtesy of my fellow, more experienced counter. “It’s important work for the nature society - keeping track of their numbers, as they’re a threatened species."
The jogger throws back his shoulders and appears flabbergasted. “Wow! No! Seriously? Where they comin’ from?” he asks.
“From just over there! Have you been down the track? There’s a huge colony.” She gestures towards the track and the hard-to-miss sign, ‘Wolli Creek Two Valley Trail’.
“Where? Just over there? Serious?" I’m worried the jogger thinks this is a bit of a joke.
“Oh, you’ve gotta do the track. It’s absolutely beautiful."
“Yeah? I’ve lived here forty years and I’ve never been down there.”
Throughout their conversation I’m counting flying foxes overhead and clicking away on my counter. They’ll all leave the camp tonight but because of the windy conditions some are struggling to cross the threshold. My brain is stuck on the number five: one click for every five flying foxes. But the big picture, once the numbers from all the counters are tallied, will be six thousand. Six thousand flying foxes are exiting the camp tonight, and it’s only the start of the season. Come March next year, all being well, there’ll be at least double that.
The jogger is about to jog off when he hesitates and says what he’s obviously been thinking all along.
"Bats...don’t they carry coronavirus?"
My unflappable fellow counter kills this question dead with a very sound piece of advice.
“Just don’t bite them and you’ll be fine.”
From roasting-hot days through to unfounded virus fears, 2020 has been a rough year for bats. For Sydney's grey-headed flying foxes, this confounds lots of pre-existing animosity regarding their fruit-tree-devouring, toxic-poop-producing, Lyssavirus-carrying (just don’t bite them!) ways. But I for one am so grateful to this ‘megabat’ species with their cute foxy faces. Be they asleep or awake, feeding or preening, a visit to their camp never fails to lift my spirits. As a tonic for this (or any) year, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Author Bio: Lani is an ESL teacher, musician and rabbit mum with a dusty creative writing degree. She has been renting a house in Turrella and enjoying the surrounding nature since early 2020. The flying fox counts are conducted by volunteers under the aegis of Wolli Creek Preservation Society.