There is something amazing about the people who choose to do bat surveys. The hours are antisocial, the work tiring, the locals challenging and the filling station food abominable, but the real hard core bat surveyors keep coming back for more, and I have encountered some genuine characters - from the charming to the terrifying, with throughly peculiar and absolutely astonishing likely to turn up as well. So, I feel it is past time to celebrate some of them (Names have been changed to protect the very guilty).
Beach-ball Barbara used to turn up early for surveys,
to allow time for her special pre-survey ritual. Barbara had a problem with the
cold. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t like the cold, it was that she had
never experienced what she considered to be warmth and so the pursuit of
insulation was an all-pervading occupation for her.
Before each survey Barbara would stand at the boot of her
car and pull on a couple of pairs of fleece-lined over-trousers, before
starting on the main act. She would put on fleece after fleece, starting with
some figure-hugging ones, moving onto some regular fleeces and then slowly
building up the layers and sizes until, some time later, she finally pulled an
XXL size one over the top of enough fleeces to equip a fair-sized flock of
sheep.
By this point Barbara’s shape had changed from regular human
to something roughly planet-shaped. Finally satisfied that she had done all
that could be done she would add several woolly hats and waddle across to give
her standard greeting of “Bit nippy tonight, isn’t it?” As I was more than likely
wearing a T-shirt it was usually hard to know how to reply to that.
“Mad” Angus had an amazing ability to confound
perspective. Though I’m sure he was a sensible height he seemed to be
around 8 feet tall. His uncontrollable shock of ginger hair, sun-reddened
complexion and burly figure, when allied to a good Scots brogue, created an
overall impression of someone who might at any moment choose to come hurtling
down a hillside towards you, clad in just a plaid, brandishing a claymore and howling gaelic
war-cries.
In fact Angus was the most polite and gentle person you
could hope to meet, but “crazy eight-foot highlander” was how he looked
and so it was always my intention to push him towards any trouble on a survey,
in the expectation that the bad guys would take one look at Angus and choose to
slink rapidly back under their flat stones of choice, allowing us to complete
our bat survey in peace.
The giggle twins were not in fact twins, but I always
found it convenient to think of them as such. At some point in the dim and
distant past Suzie and Alison had met on a training course and bonded, forming
the sort of close, almost symbiotic friendship that women seem to be so much
better at than us men.
I could never understand why they didn’t appear to socialise
together, but it seemed like bat surveys did the trick for them. So, the
preparation for every survey would commence with Suzie and Alison, both
screeching with delight to see their long-lost friend (despite having done a
survey together yesterday) and dancing around each other, both talking nineteen
to the dozen as each attempted to update the other about every tiny detail of
their lives since they last met. How either heard a word of what the other was saying is beyond me, but the whole ritual seemed to make them both happy and it
was certainly entertaining to watch.
Jim the Grinch was about as emotionally distanced
from Suzie and Alison as it was possible to be. I could never understand why he
did bat surveys, since he gave every impression of hating bats, bat surveys,
bat detectors and in fact absolutely everything connected with the whole
process.
I’m fairly certain Jim had long since forgotten the technique for smiling, and his pebble-like eyes glowered out from under a permanent frown and Compo hat. He kept a soggy cigarette permanently stuck to his bottom lip and would occasionally make perfunctory attempts to re-light it, whilst complaining bitterly about anything and everything. The bat detector was deaf, the batteries were no good; the site was too muddy; the weather looked poor, the younger surveyors knew nothing, and on and on he would go. At least I think he did. I had long ago perfected the technique of allowing him five gripes and then switching off.
Graham, the fabulous baking boy was pretty average as a bat surveyor, but sometimes other things matter more and his home-baking was simply superlative. You could guarantee that he would turn up to each survey, dripping in tupperware, and would start handing out his delicious largesse to anyone who came within range. In fact, he was very useful when a client turned up on a survey, as I could count on him to keep them entertained with sticky buns or triple-choc-chip muffins (yes, they are a thing, and utterly delicious), whilst the rest of us got on with the survey.
Some years ago I instituted a rule known as the "donut survey rule". This dictates that any bat survey which takes place in an urban location, with low bat activity, is officially designated a "donut survey" and the company provides donuts at the end. Graham took offence at Tesco's offering and took on this task, creating the most incredible sticky, gooey donuts you can imagine, so urban surveys suddenly became surprisingly popular. But in my view Graham's pièce de résistance was definitely the dawn survey pain au chocolat. I can think of no better way to end a dawn survey in a concrete jungle than to bite into one of those meltingly delicious confections.
Keep checking back - I'll share some more of my favourite bat survey characters soon.
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