Regular readers may remember that I am not fond of bats. They scare the hell out of me. It's unnatural for squirrels to fly, although I guess that's how that one on Donald Trump's head got there. Flying fox bats often visit our palm trees and grevilleas in the garden and they squeak and flap so much that I have to run up inside the jumper of whichever member of staff I happen to be sitting on at the time and cover my ears with my paws. If I'm in my house I simply squeal like a girl until someone picks me up and comforts me. Bats don't seem to bother Badger, but then nothing much does. He just stares them down, he's such a cold eyed hard piggy. Try to imagine Tom Cruise in a really bad mood because someone has just squirted water at him, except he's got a big fat, black, shiny, furry bottom - that's Badger.
You're probably wondering where I'm going with all this. Me too.............Ah yes, bats. Now although I loathe bats I understand that they have a right to live and that they are very important in pollinating fruit trees and fruit is very close to my own piggy heart (and stomach). I especially love apples and pears. Not so keen on bananas though after my male staff described what happens to them in some bars and clubs in Bangkok, where ladies will sometimes...........never mind.........I just don't like bananas okay.
Here in sunny Queensland, Orstraya the TV news tells me that we are in the midst of an outbreak of hendra virus, so named because it was first identified in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra. Be eternally thankful that it wasn't found in Wales in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwlllantsiliogogogoch. Anyway, wherever it was first found it is a particularly nasty virus which is spread by flying fox bat poo. Horses which graze under trees in which the bats roost succumb to this horrible virus and die within days, sometimes hours. It also spreads from the stricken horse to vets who do not wear protective clothing when treating the animal. Often it kills them too.
We in Orstraya are blessed with our fair share of fruitcakes, two of whom comprise one hundred percent of my staff. Many others are elected to parliament. One such fruitcake goes by the name of Bob Katter. He's the Federal member for Kennedy. He was a member of the National Party, but even they weren't loopy enough for him so he left and became independently loopy. For anyone not familiar with him, he's a sort of cross between JR Ewing and Sarah Palin, in that he wears a big stupid hat and has a mouth many times bigger than his brain. He wants all flying fox bat colonies chased away from populated areas - moved on. What he doesn't say is how he is going to control where the bats go. Chase a colony from one populated area Bob, and they'll more than likely go to another. And like many of us, when bats are scared they tend to poo a lot more. They're only in populated areas in the first place because developers and farmers clearing land have destroyed their natural habit - the poor little buggers have nowhere else to go. If you don't want your horses to die, get off your fat arses and fence off the trees that the bats are roosting in. There, once again "Wonder Pig" has solved your problem for you.
Bob looks like one of those Aussies you often see at airports - the really insecure type with the loud, lazy, nasal voice and the akubra hat superglued to their head so that everyone on their plane and everyone at their destination knows that they're from Australia. The German equivalent would be to wear lederhosen and to do one of those thigh slapping dances in the check-in queue. Here's a couple of questions for you. Why do these akubra toting tossers think anyone cares where they come from? And, who the hell votes for Bob Katter? It's not my staff, they don't live in his electorate, so there must be a lot of other fruitcakes in Kennedy. Despite his nuttiness, or more likely because of it, Bob's gorgeous face gets a lot of time on the TV. It's not just a veneer of lunacy that he displays on the telly either. A few years ago he came into my staff's travel agency and was loopy in real life too, so they tell me, and they're well qualified to recognise loopiness when they see it.
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