The Bat's Flight
Superstition about vampires and the very oddness of a winged mouse makes most people dislike a bat, although few have handled them and discovered for themselves what wonderful little creatures they are. I like to watch them at dusk, flickering and darting and twisting above the gardens, something like birds, something like butter- flies, with wonderful speed and an ability to turn and brake just when it seems their apparent blindness is about to prove fatal. I have handled two kinds of bat, studied the folded leather wings, the ugly little mouth and the ears that seem to pick up the slightest sound wave. When I was small I was told I could catch a bat by throwing up my handkerchief in its path. I never managed to do so. It was probably a bit of fancy, like the often-repeated story of the bat's ability to entangle itself in a lady's hair. I never saw a bat manoeuvre with less skill than a darting swift, and the odd idea that because human eyesight fails in twilight, the eyes and senses of other creatures are similarly handicapped is made nonsense of by cats and owls and most wild creatures quite apart from bats.
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