Bats and Idiots !!!

Right!!! the idiots first ... I was taking the xbox360 recluse to Aikido training last night and we noticed some very slow moving cars along the road peering into properties and stopping to look at walls, it took a while to sink in what they were doing but then it dawned on me they were treasure hunters, these are people who think it's fun to stop on blind bends and block roads whilst looking for cryptic clues posted on gates and walls and telegraph poles, each clue points to the next clue etc etc etc ad nauseum ....woohoo fun times !!!

anyway there is a blind bend at the bottom of our road and there is NOTHING ever on that bend except perhaps a depressed rabbit with its eyes closed and paws pressed together wanting to meet its maker "Frith" and end it all.... but this particular night there were three cars parked on my side of the road with the "idiots" wandering around outside a farm gate and on the road with car doors open looking for the next clue, needless to say I had to stand on the brakes or die, so after my blood stopped boiling I carried on..... gesturing like a wild man using the universal "Billy Connelly" sign language at the "idiots"... then to really put the cat amongst the pigeons a few more miles down the road yet another road block of "idiots" as other road users coming the other way tooted their way past, eventually I got to Whitland and dropped off the Xbox boy and started to make my way back, it was then that my cunning plan took hold of me and refused to let me go....

I stopped at three of the places where I saw a clue posted as I drove to Whitland and I simply drove up and ripped them off and threw them in my foot well, and considering you need each clue in turn to get to the next... they were buggered before they started really :)

funny that the cars dried up after that...

call me a killjoy.... who cares !! in one (actually three) swoop(s) I've reduced their carbon footprint by making them go home and watch Eastenders and probably saved a few of them from being horribly mangled by a head on collision with a combine harvester or worse...


The only other two things of note that night was catching my youngest step son guzzling lemonade straight from the bottle, I said to him "Get a glass !!" he replied with a defiant loud burp, so I picked up the newly opened bottle of lemonade and tipped its entire contents down the sink right in front of his agog eyes he asked "why did you do that ?" I replied "Well I like lemonade too, but I prefer it not to be mixed with other peoples spit to be honest"...(blank stare) ..... he knows now if he is caught drinking anything straight from the bottle it goes down the drain, no arguments .....Andrea agrees it's a vile habit especially when others are drinking out of the same bottle for days on end.... we've been telling him for months not to do it but its never worked... who knows maybe a bit of shock treatment might work .... now where did I put those electrodes ...... hmmmm ;¬)

and the other incident that night was of my walking disaster of a step daughter leaving her bag at a fast food emporium in Carmarthen complete with her school books and hair dryer and hair straighteners, which wasn't made any better by her ringing up and telling her mum just before xbox boy and I had to leave for Aikido that she had remembered she had left her bag at the junk food emporium whilst on the bus but THEN got off the bus mid way to her sleep over with her friend and THEN realised that she didn't have enough money to go back to said junk food emporium via bus OR to her friends and then to add insult to injury .......telling her mum that she had also forgotten her school clothes and had left them at home, needless to say Andrea was not impressed and didn't despite her best efforts recover her bag....the police have been informed but we aren't holding our breath....... rolls eyes

Now we get onto the really sensible Bats, all of a sudden we seem to be over run by bats the ones we have are called Leisler’s bat and we seem to be finding them everywhere, Andrea had one hanging from her work trousers this morning and the screech could be heard in Swansea (her not the bat), I released it seeing as nobody else will touch them.... I released one last night which had found its way into the kids lounge and there was one in the bathroom, so that's three in one night !! and there were another two previous to that...

they are dozy little things during the day, you can pick them up and put them outside without so much as a flutter, technically you need a license to handle bats, but you are perfectly within your rights to remove a bat from your house for it's own safety as long as you don't harm it prior to it's release and at £5000 a pop you really don't want to squish a bat.....


in fact here is a summary of Bats and the Law

All UK bats and their roosts are protected by law. Since the first legislation, introduced in 1981, that gave strong legal protection to all bat species and their roosts in England, Scotland and Wales, additional legislation and amendments have been implemented in all countries within the UK. For all countries of the UK therefore, the legal protection for bats and their roosts may be summarised as follows:

You will be committing a criminal offence if you:

1. Deliberately* capture, injure or kill a bat
2. Intentionally or recklessly disturb a bat in its roost or deliberately disturb a group of bats
3. Damage or destroy a bat roosting place (even if bats are not occupying the roost at the time)
4. Possess or advertise/sell/exchange a bat (dead or alive) or any part of a bat
5. Intentionally or recklessly obstruct access to a bat roost

*In a court, 'deliberately' will probably be interpreted as someone who, although not intending to capture/injure or kill a bat, performed the relevant action, being sufficiently informed and aware of the consequence his/her action will most likely have.)

There are a few defences in law; for instance, low-level disturbance of bats or obstruction of a roost access may be construed as 'the incidental result of an otherwise lawful operation'. However, it would be a matter for experts to ascertain whether the disturbance was considered to be of a low enough level to fall within this defence. Similarly, it would be for experts to ascertain that obstruction of a roost access didn't amount to damage or destruction of a roost. Depending upon the detail of the actions, it may be that neither incident would be 'eligible' for the incidental result defence in court.
Other defences include:

1. Tending/caring for a bat solely for the purpose of restoring it to health and subsequent release
2. Mercy killing where there is no reasonable hope of recovery (provided that person did not cause the injury in the first place - in which case the illegal act has already taken place).

Penalties on conviction - the maximum fine is £5,000 per incident or per bat (some roosts contain several hundred bats), up to six months in prison, and forfeiture of items used to commit the offence, eg vehicles, plant, machinery.