🚀 go-pugleaf

PM> Some old bats around this dump really know how to hurt a guy.
PM> . . . But seriously, folks, I think a great deal about bats,

Our local railway museum--where I serve as a conductor and dining car
steward when less important employment doesn't interfere--had a bit of a
bat problem. We acquired a right-of-way that included a 986-foot
antebellum tunnel which, due to desuetude, had become the habitat for a
large collection of bats and bums--both groups of which made the
prospect of track refurbishment in the tunnel more daunting than it
might otherwise have been.

The derelicts turned out to be a non-problem, as they fled at the first
sight of honest work. Not so the bats, who clung to their perches
regardless our best efforts to frighten them off.

Finally work was completed, and photographers gathered about the far
portal to record for posterity the view of the first steam locomotive to
traverse the bore in a quarter century. The bats, previously
unresponsive by day, took no small umbrage at the event of having steam
and smoke blown up their (poor substitute for) tail feathers, and as if
a single organism, emerged from the tunnel ahead of the locomotive.

In the words of one witness, "They came flying out of there like bats
out of . . .

.      . . . <wait for it> . . .

.                          . . . a railroad tunnel!"
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Internet: bruce.metcalf@toadhall.com (Bruce Metcalf)
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