Bats

Bats! So scary in our culture, so scary in our literature, our comics, our movies. And yet, find a bunch of little children who go out on the front porch, see a few bats swirling, and what do you have?

A tornado! Oh Wow! Look at all those birds -- they're like a tornado!

Of course, they weren't birds, even though a bunch of children (and I) thought that they were. LOML explained that they were bats, that they lived in a neighbour's chimney, and that every evening you could see them swirl and dive into their home.

Well, chastened and informed, I watched (as did the children without the chastening:-)) as many thousands of bats --- I'd guess three or four thousand bats --- flew clockwise then anti-clockwise patterns around the house with the chimney. Finally, and quite suddenly, they started diving into the chimney. The whole dive took several minutes, and every second, a slew of bats --- 5, 10, 15 --- flew into the chimney.

A spectacle unlike anything I've seen!

Yours, driven batty (of course:-)
N.