http://traumaqueen.net/, the Diary of an Ambulance Worker/Photographer from Edinburgh is one of my favourite blogs. Recently, Kal has been running a competition. We have to guess what strange object it is sitting on his friend Calum's head.
Well my guess has had to be 'a cat!'. All Right?
As I begin to think of promoting my blog (and assuming I'll get the hang of it at some stage), I notice that my book Blogging For Dummies says that a competition is a very good way of attracting comments to a blog.
OK, Kal gets plenty of comments. He's a great writer with an astounding insight into the ways of the worlds.
Gee, if I was getting any comments apart from the odd encouraging email from this friend or that, I might have run the above picture as a What IS It?? competition myself! It had me more than bamboozled for some considerable length of time.
Fact is, the above marks on the outer walls and door of the laundry such as I show in the photo above, scared me shitless when I first saw them.
It was a day or so after the hostile neighbours departed. Yeh, they had wanted my flat. Like many other ignorant people in Sydney, they just assumed that as a Pensioner I'm automatically and immediately eligible for Government Housing.
(Even if that was possible, I don't want it because I want to EARN again eventually!)
In the months they spent next door in the smaller flat, I'd hear them planning my excavation through the wall. They had extraordinarily loud coarse voices. One time they even managed an Eviction Notice. I found a Lawyer. They began to back down only after this uniquely sane and intelligent woman took their arguments apart.
The air around their place became darker. Tired of bad-vibed people, I just began to pray that in this rental challenged city (and with their Real Estate connections), they'd find a really nice place somewhere else.
Whether it was the prayers or the winter chill of their southside flat, they did find another place and they departed, admittedly leaving the smoke alarm screaming all weekend to replace their voices and that abominable snare drum.
They were spiteful in the ways that children can be spiteful, I suppose. I think that most of the damage in this poor world is caused by the twisted perceptions of adults who haven't been able to grow out of their inner (warped) child!
Soon after their departure, with my brain still exhausted from the long drawn out shrilling of their smoke alarm, I was feeling vulnerable enough for the marks on the laundry door, (resembling gobs of gore), to bother me to the max.
Apart from paint or organic matter in a water pistol, how could these blotches have occurred?
An Aboriginal and a Euro marriage I knew of in a racist Northern town had the experience of a tomato sauce spraying all over the front of their flat by local Klan members, believe it or not!!!
The red blotches on my wall and laundry door gave me the same sick feeling as had that tomato sauce attack, in that case, a benign product used to symbolise horrid attitudes!
The fact that I have a laundry and the former neighbours didn't have a laundry, had been a bone of contention. Odd, if they'd been friendly, I wouldn't have minded sharing, but if there's one thing I've learned from group flats and share situations, it's that you can't share a laundry with someone who hates you or holds you in contempt.
So threat was my first thought; from earsplitting dins to faeces wrapped and placed in my garden cleaning zones, had it come to a real threat similar to the tomato sauce stunt from that long ago northern summer?
OK, I make it a practice not to suffer in silence these days. One of the things that would always draw my temper previously was the inherited family tendency to pretend that everything is fine even when it's horrible.
(If things fine and attacks begin, a very common experience for any one with a condition such as Asperger's Syndrome, there's only so much pretence or panic I can manage before my temper, my considerable temper will blow and then frequently things will just get worse!)
Therefore, before sending off a terrified letter to the Agency and calling the Cops, I decide to convene a meeting in the back yard with Anna and Neighbour Ron.
At our meeting, the cats gather too. They seem to know that something serious is up.
They hated the recent dins as much as I did and were always afraid of those neighbours. As Ron, Anna and self all talk, the cats stay close by as if they are listening.
'You know, what I reckon it is, it might be bats!' says Ron.
'BATS!!??!!??'
We'd already wondered if the recent winds have been strong enough to blow the juicy loquats all the way across the yards and we've decided, No. Then we notice that the fence between my yard and the general yard also has red stains.
Ok, so the bats may fly over a fence dropping their faeces, but on the walls under the guttering? How?
It dawns on us all at once.
Sydney's fruit bats are enormous, bigger than crows and even bigger than currawongs. The wing spans we see above us as they cheeteringly flap past on moonlit nights, are even wider than the wing spans of the black cockatoos, and the black cockatoo is a damn big bird!
We look at the loquat tree again. Two days ago, it was loaded with fruit. Today, there are not that many loquats at all!
The bats must have come and feasted, flown over the middle fence and then hung off the guttering for a post dinner nap.
The red 'gobs of gore' are bat poo.
I'm struck by the imaginary images of these large umbrella-ed flight creatures hanging off my guttering and carelessly shitting on the wall, and I decide that I must get pictures.
I guess my new neighbour now either thinks I'm mad or is beginning to develop paranoia himself.
The night of our meeting, while there are still some loquats on the tree, I go to bed dressed except for the boots. The camera is charged and ready by my bed. Then every hour, I get up, put my slippers on and go through the front door very quietly. I tip-toe past my new neighbour's sensor light, (bling! on it goes each time). Next, I sneak quietly around the corner and over to my fence. No bats hanging. Then I bling my way back and try again. And again.
There are no bats that night. The bastards must have found another tree.
Would have been a great shot eh?
