The Epomophorus Gambianus

As I've mentioned before, the lights go out at 9:00 pm here, and considering that I wake up before 6:00 am every day that is a perfectly suitable bedtime for me.  Thursday I'd been asleep for about two hours when I was woken up to the strange and loud sound of flying.  Not buzzing like a bee or a mosquito, but a high-frequency beating noise like a small, remote-controlled helicopter.  It is d-a-r-k here at night, and in the pitch black I could only think that a large moth had snuck into my room.  

I turned on my flashlight and started untucking my mosquito net when the thing flew right by my head.  "Whoa tiger," I thought to myself, "you should probably rethink getting out of bed at this moment."  So I sat up and aimed my flashlight into the room and soon enough an enormous bat flew into the light.  A BAT, y'all.   Let me just say that I despise bats (and most other flying species) and I always have.  There's no way I'd ever willingly put myself unprotected in the habitat of a great white shark, crocodile, cobra, python, or polar bear, and I'm pretty sure I can out-run, out-smart or kill the average spider, snake or other frightening creature.  But BATS and other flying animals have such an advantage because they can move around IN THE AIR!  They can attack from all directions and there is no way I can out-fly a BAT!     

And somehow a BAT had slipped into my room and was now zooming around like a kamikaze pilot.  That sucker was fast and it kept buzzing by my head and fear totally overtook me.  It was enormous after all, about the size of large baby, and it flew at a speed near mach 3, and I paid attention in science class just enough to know that BATS have teeth and can eat through mosquito nets in less than ten seconds, and 100% of BATS have rabies and love the taste of human flesh. 

For two hours (that is not an exaggeration) I stayed awake praying for that BAT to die.  At one point it stopped flying and started crawling on the floor under my desk, and I was legitimately afraid that it would end up crawling on my desk and would knock over a tall glass of water onto my computer.  (Rationality eventually came back to me.)  Some time after 1:00 am I fell asleep in the center of my bed.

The next morning I woke up to total silence in my room and after checking the floor and ceiling for any sign of the BAT I got out of bed and showered, brushed my teeth and got dressed in less than eight minutes - I wasn't taking any chances.  The very first thing I did was ask the kids in my English class about BATS.  

"Are they dangerous?"   "Yes!"   

"Do they bite humans?"   "Yes!  And they're poisonous!"   Rabies is poison, you know.  

"Do they sleep during the day?"  "Yes, they sleep when it's light and fly when it's dark."   

My worst fears were confirmed.  At lunch Pooshani asked why I'd left my door open in the morning.  Well, I hadn't done it intentionally, but maybe the BAT flew out while my door was open?  I could only hope.  

Throughout Friday I hurried in and out of my room and finally that night I'd had enough of being afraid, and plus I had things to do.  So there I was in my shower doing laundry without any clothes on (I was washing the clothes I'd worn that day) when the BAT swooped down from the ceiling toward my head.  I have never hit the floor so fast in my life.  It did a few laps around the bathroom before flying into the main area, so I quickly threw on some clothes (a skirt and shirt that had been in the laundry for a few days, gross), wrapped a towel around my head and started swinging another towel in the air. Game on, BAT.  After I worked up some courage I ran out of my room to Dennis and Lilly's house. Maybe it was the towel around my head, my labored breathing, or the look of panic on my face but Lilly calmly asked, "Did the bat come out?"  "Yes!  It's back and it grew another set of fangs!"  So Dennis grabbed the badminton racket they keep for such occasions and led the way back to my room.  I waited outside while he chased around the BAT and in less than three minutes he came out carrying it on a shoebox lid. Its body ended up being no bigger than a deck of cards.  Seriously.  "I can't believe such a small thing could terrorize me so much!"  I said.  "Fear is all in the head, Mary,"  replied Dennis, the Vietnam vet who has lived in Sudan for a decade.  Well, that may be true, but that BAT was in my room and they spit acid when provoked, you know.

Public Service Announcement:  The gambian epauletted fruit bat (Epomophorus gambianus) is a small bat that lives in fruit trees (like mango trees) in tropical areas of Africa, such as South Sudan.  Only 5 - 10% of these bats carry rabies, but they will bite people if threatened.  You have been warned.