What with All Hallows Eve being just a day away, many of us are knee-deep in imagery of things – both real and imaginary – that go bump in the night, presumably with nefarious intentions. Of these a sizable portion are depictions of bats. However rather than being the malicious harbingers of doom they are generally portrayed to be, bats are in fact both fascinating and ecologically essential creatures.
The sound is like nothing else on earth.
I was sound asleep, breathing in the fresh, clean air of the Berkshire countryside that drifted into my room through an open window near the bed, when I was jerked into consciousness by what I at first thought was a woman screaming. As I lay there in the dark, asking myself just what it was that I heard, another scream burst through the midnight silence, followed quickly by two more. By that time it was clear to me that it wasn’t a human scream, but for the life of me I couldn’t find anything in my brain to which it might be connected. More mammalian than avian, I finally drifted back off to sleep after some time, puzzling over the just what it might have been.
It was a fox – a Red Fox, Vulpes vulpes to be precise.