The Jealousy of Bats

I'm waiting for bats to swoop down and carry me away.  This may sound unlikely but they've been gathering outside my apartment and I'm sure they're up to no good.  Actually I think there's only one bat but its been moving about a lot and making that leathery swishing sound with its wings.  I'm also not sure if bats do actually swoop down on people.  My knowledge of bats is limited to horror movies and old Scooby Doo cartoons.  All I can say for certain is that bats tend to concentrate around the smart girl and knock her glasses off thus rendering her blind and helpless.  I know I'm not a girl but I've switched to contacts just to be on the safe side.  No bat is going to send me blind.

It's all jealously of course.  Bats are almost blind so they're probably envious of people who have managed to overcome their own vision impairment by wearing glasses.  Thus they spend their time trying to even up the score.  Which is grossly unfair of the bats because they get sonar.  We don't get sonar, not even the most blind of us but with bats it comes as standard.  Even the rare bat with twenty-twenty vision gets sonar.  We have to build our own.

Now that I come to think of it bats must be great at finding submarines.  I wonder if anybody has considered exploiting that?  Rather than spending immense amounts of money on high tech equipment we could simply equip every naval vessel with a cage of bats to be dumped over the side to hunt for submarines.  Of course there is the minor drowning issue to be overcome but surely equipping the bats with scuba gear would still be more cost effective than an entire sonar array.

If the bats won't do it for us maybe something else will.  Manta rays look a bit like bats, has anybody investigated whether they have sonar.  If they do we could save a fortune on bat seasickness pills.  If it turns out that mantas are sonar challenged perhaps a little genetic engineering could help.  I think I left my gene splicer in the drawer with the other cutlery.

So in conclusion if, while out walking at night, you are suddenly mobbed by a flock (herd? swarm?) of bats don't worry too much.  They're probably just irritated because you're wearing glasses.  Either that or they were spooked by a low flying submarine.