When you are outnumbered 20 to 1 by bats in your rural Australian town, you can be sure that the Batman-jokes are all you are going to her that week. It’s a bat-astrophe for which citizens have formed a Bat Action Group.
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All jokes aside though when the skies turn black as a flock of bats moves around in a 200.000 strong group and two parks and a pool are closed ‘indefinitely’ for public health fears, you know your town is in trouble.
Yes, a small town in northern Queensland, Australia is under siege from swarms of bats as hundreds of thousands of flying foxes have been terrorising Charters Towers in recent days with screeching dive-bombing runs that have dropped tonnes of batshit all over.
The mayor of the small town, Ms Liz Schmidt said the council would “continue to monitor flying fox levels and distribute public surveys.”
“Myself and council encourage everyone to fill out a survey so that we can take that to the state government and get something happening.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">'<a href="https://twitter.com/itvnews?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@itvnews</a>: A plague of 200,000 bats has taken over Charters Towers in Australia leaving locals scared to leave their homes <a href="https://t.co/iG6SwfVZFy">https://t.co/iG6SwfVZFy</a></p>— Willem J. Bod (@WillemBod) <a href="https://twitter.com/WillemBod/status/939582215780032512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 9, 2017</a></blockquote>
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But local resident Mr Jack McDougall, who used to live in Middlemount where they had a similar problem, said that he formed the Bat Action Group to put political pressure on state and federal governments to amend the law: “Our only way to get rid of the bats is to kill them.”
“This is 100 percent a political fight and we need to be a united force, with a submission signed by the public I plan to attack every politician possible with it.”
One of the reactions on his facebook page called for a drastic action though, as a commenter stated that firearm owners should 'just go and shoot the bats because they can't jail us all'.
Source:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/38226378/charters-towers-queensland-plagued-by-200-000-bats/
Australians lost the Emu War, they'll never survive in this one.
There's literally nothing wrong with bats
They eat annoying bugs, let them be
I have never known public parks and swimming pools to be closed due to an invasion of bugs, residents who can't breathe or hang out their wading but that is what has happened as a direct result of these bats. It is easy to be on the side of the bats if you don't live in Charters Towers
Footage is from about 3 years ago. Bat numbers in town have far surpassed that now.
Quick, to the bat(h) tub !