On cloudy, windy nights, bats are given grace by their sillouettes, looking like silent seagulls as they drift and coast and soar in the breeze coming off the harbour, flapping about the street lights for their meals, until they fly directly above and expose the prehensile fingertips of their membrenous wings. Their noiseless flight is the only spectacle of motion, interrupted perhaps by the glint of a late night car on a distant suburban hill across the harbour, or a ferry drifting gaily in the blackness between two piers, told always by the flashing reds and greens of the bouys. In the morning their bodies can sometimes be found in the street, killed by the wires powering the bulbs that attract their morsels of nurishment. Their deaths, surely noiseome, must occur at that perfect moment when everyone is unconscious, or, like their flight, it is soundless, and the bats hanging on the wires droop silently and gently slump into the dark bitumen of the street.
So maybe that’s what we’re like, ugle and graceful at the same time, or depending on your point of view, the sole creatures ducking and diving through our local stream of consciousness. Then, just like the bats, all at once, we are dead, and it is either silent or ignored. But there will always be more bats, because there are so many bugs.
