Upside down Down Under

"What's that up there in the tree?", we asked each other when we looked up because one of us had heard a strange sound from above.

It looked like many small, black trash bags somebody had hung in the branches.
But they moved. They unfolded. And tiny furry heads popped up - or rather down. It took a moment until we realized that we had just disturbed a pack of flying foxes during their daytime sleep.

 

They looked at us with their big black eyes. They started being really noisy as if they were complaining and telling their mates how rude it was of us to just stand there and stare at them. But we stared in awe. 

 

 They were yawning, taking a stretch, opening their wings, closing them again. 

 

I realized that I might have been preoccupying myself too much with the vampire genre (except those books where the pale and blood-loving fellows turn all glittery in sunlight!) when I caught myself  being surprised that they don't turn into dust, although some of them decided to spread their wings in broad daylight and fly away with the eerie sounds of leathery wings hectically moving, their see-through-skin showing every vein and every bone.

  

Even though they look like tiny vampires or at least like winged carnivores, like their name flying fox already suggests, they are vegetarians. This is why they are also called "fruit bats"(or "megabat" - which sounds much more intimidating...). They just love fruit, nectar, pollen, blossoms and are essential for the vegetation of the tropics: They pollinate blossoms and tranport seeds. They also do not possess echolocation which helps their smaller relatives, so-called microbats, to locate they prey.

 

And then - like petite vampire capes - after spreading their membrane skinned "arms" widely, they closed their wings tightly, wrapping themselves up like Count Dracula would do before disappearing. I even had the impression that they were cunningly smiling before they disappeared inside their own bodily shield, inside their very own sleeping bags.