Drunk and disorderly

I know what you will all be thinking when you read the title, ah, they are back to their old tricks again, alcohol every night and in excessive quantities. Well for first time ever, no – we’re not, in fact I am completely off the pop at the moment – second week now, and Melv, well he is down to one bottle (of beer, not wine like the Godney days) a night. The climate and alcohol just don’t mix and it is easy enough to become dehydrated without the help of the old jungle juice.

In fact believe or not I’m talking about the wildlife!

Particularly fruit bats and blue pigeons who gorge themselves on fermented fruits and end up looking like many of us have looked after a heavy night out. They stumble about unable to fly and in the case of a fruit bat unable to do the bat thing of hanging upside down to sleep it off. Today Melv found such a bat in the garden under the fruit trees in a bit of a state. The problem of Aride is that if you stay motionless on the ground for long enough other wildlife like crabs, ants and skinks will assume you are dead and then arrive in the 100s. Even the crabs do this with our toes at night, if we stay stationery for too long they come over and take a nibble. Well this poor old fruit bat was becoming the centre of attention and so Melv brought him back to the house and the safety of a card board box, to sleep it’s hangover off for a while.

An hour or so later Melv and Tony persuaded it to hang upside down, well nearly, or at least to stay out of the way of the scavengers, by lying on a tree stump off the ground. Come the evening it had recovered and was nosily flying around with other fruit bats, chattering, boasting about his drunken antics.

Fruit bats are excellent creatures and it was a real treat to be able to see one close up, with over a metre wingspan, they are large mammals and have the body the size of a large rodent. They don’t actually breed on Aride, but fly over from Praslin to feed on the rich fruits here. They are really spoilt for choice here as there is plenty of food, there is even a tree called the fruit bat tree.
They are widespread and endemic across the Seychelles, even on the larger islands, Praslin and Mahe, and are taken legally in some places for human consumption; fruit bat curry is quite a delicacy and often talked about. But after seeing this one close up today I think I can definitely say that is one Seychellois recipe we are not eager to try.