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It should be fairly clear from the image at the top of this page that I’m very fond of bats, both megachiroptera (fruit bats) and microchiroptera (insectivorous bats). Not only are they flying mammals, which is a great start, but the micro bats also eat biting insects which would otherwise eat me, which endears them to me hugely. If all that wasn’t enough, they are also furry, squeaky and cute. I’m labouring these points, because you’d probably otherwise get the impression from the following paragraphs that I hate bats.

During our stay in the Pantanal, we had to move rooms because of a booking confusion. The hotel rooms were wooden, two-story cabins, and we moved from a ground floor¹ room to a top floor one, which had an open space above it and to each side, under the eaves. It only took a few minutes of listening to a lot of squeaking, scrabbling and batty scrambling around². And then there was the smell. No mammalian urine (as far as I know—-I haven’t done a thorough survey) smells exactly fragrant, but bat pee is particularly musky and lingering, and there was a very distinct whiff of it, both inside and outside our room. When you’re getting up at 5am in the dark, an all-pervading atmosphere of bat pee doesn’t improve the experience.

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So, I’m back home again, after what feels like a very long three weeks. Brazil is (and continues to be) a wonderful, exciting country with truly lovely people, but what with one thing and another (none of which I really want to go into), it has been an exhausting period, and I’m glad to be back home. After a long, tough time away from home, there really is nothing more wonderful than your own bed, not to mention your own husband beside you in the bed¹.

I’ve had a couple of days of trying to wade through the vast pile of email, real mail and other work that has accumulated in the time I’ve been away, and I’m beginning to feel that I might soon be able to catch glimpses of the carpet underneath the pile.

Mr. Bsag has also been busy during my absence, and has painted the living room, repainted three walls of my office on which we made a big colour mistake (and also cleaned up my sloppy brushwork around the edges), cut back some rampant laurel bushes in the garden and started treating the fences with wood preservative. The place looks much lighter, brighter and tidier than when I left.

I’ll be back with tales of bats, giant flattened spiders and food impaled on swords in due course, but if you’ll excuse me, there’s a duvet I need to snuggle under.

¹ By which I mean, of course, that I’ve slept alone, not that I’ve been sleeping beside someone else’s husband. Just so that’s clear. ↑

I’m off to Brazil to work for three weeks tomorrow. What with my slightly dodgy health situation, and leaving our new house just when I’m settling in, I can’t say that I’m as excited as I might be about going. It’s also a long time to be away from Mr. Bsag. At least this year, we got to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary together (it’s today).

Still, I’ve got several tonnes of equipment crammed in a suitcase with some clothes filling the gaps, checked my hand baggage repeatedly for any deadly liquids, gels or creams (aaarghh! lip salve!), and I have a big roll of gaffer tape to fix anything that needs fixing, and to effect emergency surgical repairs. Gaffer tape can hold anything together, right?

See you all when I get back, and have a great September.