Look. Up In The Sky. A Flying Fox. A Fruit Bat. A Possum With Wings.

One of the many joys that come from living in the country is the close contact you get to have with the surrounding wildlife.

And from time to time we get to 'share' the efforts of our labour with alot of them - birds eating seed and fruit, wallabies and hares eating grasses and vegetables, and these guys, flying foxes, eating fruit from the plum and peach trees.

As you can see, this guy got caught in the barb-wire fence right next to the orchard, which only goes to prove that unlike true bats, 'fruit bats' don't have radar / sonor to direct them away from such things.

We helped him out of his predicament, and he spent the rest of the day hanging in the tree recuperating.

Further information on these creatures can be found here at Wikipedia, here at Living Harbour and here at Flying Foxes in Australia.

And I still think they should be called possums with wings.

Comments

[Andrew the Organic Maven]

Thanks for that info Storm.

We were aware of the disease problem and wore gloves during the short ordeal.

Need to look up the WIRES contacts here on the Mid North Coast - thanks for the prompt.

Cheers
Andrew the Organic Maven

[storm]

Good on you for freeing this little bat. He is a grey-headed flying-fox (Pteropus poliocephalus). They are vulnerable to extinction because of destruction of their habitat.

Just for future referance, often after being on barbed wire these guys need extended care so if you happen up on this situation again it would be cool if you called WIRES or whatever the local Wildlife rehab org is near you. They will send someone out to get the bat out of the enganglement and then care for the animal until it is able to be released.

In addition, a very, very small % of bats carry a disease called Australian Bat Lyssavirus. If you were bitten or scratched while resucing this guy it would be wise to front up to your GP and talk about getting vaccinated against rabies.

cheers
storm

[Andrew the Organic Maven]

Thanks for your comments ladies. And yes, despite the bad publicity, they are interesting. I think we could probably find out some more if we altered our view of these creatures.
Cheers
Andrew

[Laura Z]

OMG! And you thought the flying monkey's were bad!

[Lona]

Ouch! Although they get bad publicity, they are kind of fascinating to see.