chunder down under

I was on the bus this morning, idly looking out the window, when I noticed that the sky was half black with bats. Something must have disturbed them, because it was about 10am, bright blue sky and blazing sunshine, and they normally spend all day hanging in the trees near the esplanade. In fact there is a street perpendicular to the esplanade that I call "Bat Shit Street" - the whole street stinks of guano, and any cars that have been left there for any length of time are caked in it. Walking across it in the rain is as treacherous as walking across Trafalgar Square when it is wet.
I regretted not having my camera with me, I haven't yet got any decent pictures of bats. When you first come here and see them flying you assume that they are birds, just because they are the size of seagulls. It's only when you have a Hammer Horror moment and notice that the wings are, well, bat-shaped that it sinks in.
They're harmless, of course, but I lived in a house with the washing line under a massive mango tree and became used to scraping their crap off my smalls in the morning. I don't really notice them much now, apart from today as it was unusual to see so many, but it gives many a tourist a start when they flap out of a tree almost right into someone.