I can hear a loud chirping noise from outside as I prepare to go to sleep at night. Surely it cannot be a bird? I hear nothing in the day. Tonight all has been explained. Beneath the one room that is habitable at the Greek Hovel is the bat room, named after the dominant species of inhabitant when I arrived. Behind me but a level down, underneath the snake veranda, is the rat room, the veranda and the room both named for similar reasons. The latter has been cleansed of rats and it is where I store wood for the winter.
As I drove back the other day the headlights of my car were undipped and shone into the rat room and I saw little creatures flying around. The bats, it seems, have a new home.
Bats here do not carry rabies and they eat mosquitoes and so they are, in my book, good guys. I do not mind them although if they fly towards you as they did when I initially cleared the bat room of junk, it is a touch un-nerving.
And so it finally dawned on me, is the noise I hear my friends the bats, perhaps magnifed by a pretty much entirely blocked off ventilation pipe that connects the rat room to my bedroom? Luckily the internet has everything. Below is the noise that will send me to sleep tonight.