I Didn't Bat an Eye

Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup Episode of the Old Coot Report. I'm sure many of you have been awaiting a writeup of the Ribfest 2006, but you won't be getting it in this post. I haven't had enough energy to marinate on the day, so you'll have to wait another day for that issue. What you're gonna get today is a quick addendum to yesterday's post.

In yesterday's post, I talked about my fear of natural bodies of water. I stand by my fear of aquatic life, but today I had quite the interesting experience. I was out in my kayak on Pontoosuc Lake sorting my thoughts while getting some exercise. I like to combine the two because if you happen upon an unpleasant thought, you can beat yourself up physically and work your way through it. Well, while I was working my way through some clearance items in my mental catalog the sun went down. I got to paddling quickly and then, not only had the sun set, but it got wicked dark.

As I passed Matt Riley's Pub, I noticed there were a lot of birds out over the water. Then I noticed that they were swooping and diving, with an un-birdlike erraticness (no, not eroticness). Thirdly I noticed that these birds were making a lot of clicking noises; holy crap, they were bats! There must have been hundreds of them.

As I lifted my eyes from the water directly in front of me, I realized that I was literally surrounded by my avian, mammalian kin. I sat there watching them zip around catching insects. What later struck me as odd was not the notion that there were so many bats zipping around my head, but that I didn't care. I was more concerned about the fish periodically surfacing to catch a bug, or the pontoon boats who didn't seem to notice me. Weird. I practically pee myself when a fish swims by beneath my boat, but when hundreds of bats are swooping and diving mere feet from my head I don't miss a beat.

That, my friends, can be found in the Oddity section of the Old Coot Mental Catalog.

Now, beddie bye time.

Over and Out,
Old Coot