Now here's something you don't see everyday.
 

The pictures below don't do justice to what this little guy went through so bear with me for awhile whilst I explain his journey.

I work for a rather large transport company and have seen many a strange sight,but this takes the cake.
The bat hanging around underneath this trailer is one very lucky flying fox bat.(A juvenile to boot,not quite fully grown yet).
You see,one of our drivers had returned to the yard and uncoupled his prime mover from the trailer itself.It was then,once he got out of the cab that he noticed our little friend here.
Odd to say the least.
The kicker is though that our driver had just returned from a place called Wollongong which is about 100 kilometres down the coast.
Apparently what has happened is upon arrival down there in the early hours of the morning he uncoupled the trailer whilst his freight was unloaded and when re engaging in the dark he did not see our friend had decided to take up residence.
Now we have worked out that the turntable (that is covered with grease to allow the pin of the trailer to lock shut) has slid into place but has caught his right wing and wedged him between the base of the truck and the turntable trapping him for what could only be described(in Bat terms I suppose)as the fucking ride of a lifetime.
Not much traffic on the road at 5 AM so it would be full noise back up the sweeping highway to Sydney wth an empty load.
Anyway to cut a long story short I had to get all my staff outta the way and stop them geeking at him and just in case he lashed out.The poor fella must have been scared witless as well.
You should have seen the looks on their faces.Anyone who came close got eyeballed by this guy.He just hung there and moved his head around watching every move we made.
They all fucked off in a hurry when I told them about tetnus shots and rabi's vaccines.
I phoned WIRES Wildlife Information & Rescue Service,and an hour later two volunteers came and cleaned him up a bit,put him in a cage and then back to their home to nurse him back to health.

Covered in grease,broken wing but he will be OK.
Many thanks to the rescuers and indeed WIRES for a service that often goes unnoticed.

(Pics deleted)
Need bandwidth.

Cool, always have loved bats.

We have this 100+ year old barn that is like bat central. So many bats are around here at night time, and I LOVE IT! Best insect control there is.

Never have seen a bat that large tho, would be fun. :)

Oh wow! that is something you dont see everyday. I wonder how the critter got there?

wow he's a big guy!

His little feet look so cute in the first photo.

You did a good thing handing him over to Wildlife service.

Thanks for sharing with us. :)

Wow, never seen a bat that large before!
Must've been a cool sight!

Thanks for sharing the photo's

You did an awesome job. Thanks for sharing the story.

Nice work taking care of a hurt bat.

I do think that bats are among the coolest critters on the planet. We have a few little brown bats around our house, and at dusk lurkette and I can hang out on our porch and watch their bug-catching acrobatics. Neat stuff. But compared to that guy, they're sparrows.

that bat was huge! I love bats, have bat houses around my backyard, great for keeping the skeeters down.

Great tale of woe, survival against odds, and rescue.
Thanks cchris!

wow.. that's interesting
and the size of that bat... huge

One lucky bat he/she was indeed. All's well that that ends well. That bat was huge, I can't recall seeing one that big before.

I have always loved bats.

I have been able to hold/feed the smaller ones but meeting up with one that size would be truely awesome.

You are a great person cchris.

something cool to break the monotony. ;)

When I worked for a Corona beverage distro we had an indigeous Texas scorpion ride along in one of the 12-packs. Luckily it's long trip from Gambrinus had left it at the point of death and it barely moved. We foudn out later it was highly poisonous and only texas and Mexico has the antivenin. We ended up running it over with an 8000lb forklift.

No pictures of underaged persons are allowed - No baby pictures, pictures of your youngest cousin, or pictures of you before you turned 18. No third party pictures of this sort either. :D

cool, you did a great thing!

Re: Now here's something you don't see everyday.
 

I would hate to see what that thing wuld look like when its all grown up.

bats off to you, man.

apologies.

That thing is huge. Did he suck anyone's blood?

Holy shit, that thing is huge! Thanks for the great pics.

Cool story. Thanks!

Holy crap thanks for sharing this! I thought I was having a bad day when my truck wouldn't start and I was trapped at home depot for three hours. Jeeeeze...

Cute big assed bat for being a juvey!

Thanks for the insight into that



curious how it got there though


Cheers

oh wow...I had a crappy trip to canada...reading this story makes me feel a bit better. thanks :thumbsup:

Ha ha.
I thought of that when I posted. :lol:

And on the size issue.He will grow about another two inches in length when fully grown.I have rung wires again to check up on him and he is getting a bit frisky,so he will make a full recovery.
Another week or so and back into the wild.(Thats if you can call Wollongong wild).

Wow.. awesome photos, great work on not just killing it and actually calling a wildlife rescue line!

wow, that's amazing!! good to hear he's gonna be OK. i've never seen a bat that giant, either!!

Batman!

That bat is huge! Good instinct to keep everyone away and not let someone try to go under there and scare the poor thing away.

Yeah those little guys are always flying over our pool at dusk. If you throw rocks in the air they dive for 'em :)

I like the uniforms on those animal services guys though :p

That's one thing that I don't want to see in the morning after waking up and getting out of my rig for inspection...

Bats are so weird. From what creature do you think they evolved from? I've always wondered...

We had bats in our house once. I was reading a book and my brother was watching TV. A bat flew through the room and we both saw it, but my mind didn't register it. He asked me if I had seen a bird fly through the room and I said that he was crazy. Then the bat flew back through. We had to chase it around with a broom and laundry basket lids. There was just something creepy about the way it flew. It was so unnatural.

I was caving with a friend and had a bat about 6 inches from my face when I swung my head around... it was enough to startle me and it was NO WHERE NEAR that big ~ maybe six inches? Anyways, that's an awesome bat! I liked seeing it's head watching you guys :)

Good post, wish we had more stuff like this. Thks

That's pretty cool. Being a city boy, I've never actually seen a bat other than in nature shows in PBS or Animal planet. That's pretty cool seeing it in such an situation.