Evenings here have finally started to cool off. Don’t get any ideas about breaking out the sweaters – it is a long way from that point. You’re still going to break a sweat if you do more than 10 or 15 minutes of exertion. It just feels less awful outside while you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing. So I decided to go for a really long walk and enjoy the breeze and see what there is to see outside the gate.

One of the things you see here in the evening all over the island are bats. Big brown furry fruit bats. Some people are afraid of them, some claim to have been attacked. They eat fruit, not people (that would be a sight) and you are not a fruit. Well, maybe you are, but not fruit bat fruit.

This is a lot of what they eat —> 

It is kind of funny to see big tough-guy marines afraid of bats. These are bigger than ones I had grown accustomed to seeing in Florida, but they are a long way off from terrifying. Sometimes my 3 year old runs around flapping her arms or hands saying that she is a butterfly. Just as often, she’s a bat.

They poo on my car (a lot) and chatter and carry on most of the night which keeps me up, but I don’t generally bear them any ill will. I don’t know where they hang out all day long, but they manage to be hanging out in just about every tree as the sun sets.

So this brings me to my walk.

I’m walking along, having a nice long stroll, not quite sweating yet, pushing the stroller along a tree-lined sidewalk. Suddenly, the inside of my shoe is slimy and wet. What the hell. I stop and look at the bottom of my foot. Somehow, in my special, magical way, I managed to get bat poo inside my shoe. I don’t mean on the edge or by the toes. I mean well under the heel close to the arch of my foot. How the hell did I manage that. Normal people with normal luck just step in unexpected poo. You know, so that it just gets on the outside of their shoe. Not me. Apparently I have some hidden talents.

I wonder if they have to leave the tree to poo, or if they can just hang there, upside down and all, and do it? My knowledge of bat anatomy and function is, apparently, just not up to snuff.