Bats at twilight

At twilight - when Venus glows in the sky and trees, losing their green depth, become sombre outlines - one often sees what seems to be a small lone bird fluttering about long after the other birds are gone.

Something about the frantic way in which it flaps its small wings, and in the way it darts about as if in fright, for years made me think it was a little lost bird looking for its mama or at least the rest of the flock.

Till I discovered it was not a bird, but a bat.

Why does it flutter its wings in that lost frightened way?

I thought it might be because it was blind. How scary to be blind and lost.

I have seen bats suddenly rise like a thick dark cloud out of the bushes on a hillside. It was getting dark and I was hurrying down the hill after watching the sun set when all of a sudden there were hundreds of bats gliding past me, swift, silent and intent. Not one behaved as if it was blind.

A solitary bat often flies in through an open window of my cottage at night. It will fly from room to room 'looking' for a way out, but it flies gracefully, not like my frightened twilight bat (or me flying out in fright).

Is my twilight bat still too young to have learnt how to feel its way about without sight?

Is its frantic fluttering just a bat thing and nothing whatsoever to do with fright?

I don't know.

But I'm getting used to not knowing a lot of things out here.

Like why a moth will settle down inches away from a lizard and not realise it's in danger. Or why stray dogs stay awake all night barking. Or why a frog will hide in my bookshelf till it dies and I find its dead body squashed flat between two books like a dried leaf.

It's all a mystery.

Maybe one day I'll see a pig fly and won't be surprised at all. Who can figure out, after all, the strange ways of these creatures?