Beyond the entrance to a dank, forsaken chalk mine on the edge of a wooded thicket in Surrey, England, I’m waiting for the arrival of what may just be the planet’s most unpopular creature. This year’s, certainly.
It’s late September and the time is a little after 7 pm. Above us, the harvest moon, full and bright, takes its place at the head of things. At least we won’t be in total darkness.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” says ecologist Daniel Whitby, beneath his head torch. There are five of us in the mine: Daniel; his fellow ecologists, Annika Binet and Liz Walsh; and Walsh’s husband, Ronan, who’s just tagging along.
We’ve been here for two hours, accompanied only by cave spiders.
By 9.30 pm, small talk has dried to a companionable silence. And just as I rest against the mine’s white, chalk walls and begin to feel comfortable in its labyrinthine chambers, a near-imperceptible shudder passes close to my head. Then again. And again, only this time inches from my eyes. We are no longer alone.
“Ah, hello,” Daniel says, to no one in particular. He doesn’t even look-up. The bats have arrived.
In terms of pure negative press coverage, it’s difficult to think of anyone – not terror organisation Isis, not Donald Trump, not even Prince Andrew – that has endured a worse 2020 than bats.
“China’s coronavirus DID come from bats, study claims,” British tabloid The Daily Mail trumpeted in February.
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