To the rescue

FACT: bats cannot swim.

You would think that being able to fly from point A to point B would be a fast and efficient mode of transport, thereby making the need for knowing how to swim redundant?Do you agree?

Then why, oh why, did I find this little guy/gal attempting to swim (well drowning is a more accurate term really) in the bucket of water we always keep on the balcony for Alf. I guess a small mercy is that I got there before Alf did giving the little guy/gal 1) a chance to make it; b) and not give me the nasty surprise to walk into my living room and find a dead bat on my rug. One afternoon I came home to a trail of feathers and a dead blue tit on my white living room carpet. To this day, I am still unsure who started the fight, but Alf had won it for sure.

So what would you do? Well, I called Mr T to the rescue who came armed with a tea towel to scoop up the bat. I claim that it still counts as me rescuing it on the basis that if I hadn't called Mr T this thing would have drowned for sure. FACT! I don't know why I froze when I saw it really as I used to work with rats for a living!



Yes, this is me holding a foot-long giant molerat outside my kitchen in Ethiopia.


Anyhow, I did not really fancy giving the bat a bit of a blow-dry to fluff it up, so we put it in a box lined with a towel and left it in a dark cupboard for a few hours in the hope that it will dry itself.

That seemed to work and a few hours later when we opened the lid, the little guy/gal crawled out...

... and took off. It did not go very far, 2 meters perhaps, and stayed hanging onto the side of our balcony for a bit.

We went to check on it a bit later and it was gone so we assumed this had been one successful rescue mission.

If you want to hear more stories about wild animals attempting to swim where they shouldn't, please go and visit one of my favourite blogs called "The Bearded Iris" and her recent post on an unfortunate squirrel's adventures. Warning: there may not be a happy ending but oh my this is hilarious stuff. Don't forget to clink on the link to see the picture.

Right, today is August the 1st, the Swiss National Day so we're off to Zurich to watch the celebrations and eat sausages. What else would you in Zurich on a bank holiday monday but eat sausages?

Tchuss!