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people will have checked out my bat stories.  Two of my bat stories happened on my trip to South East Asia, and one is from a canoe trip with Kilcoo Camp when I was but a Nor'Wester.  I'll tell that one first, because it's short, and to tell you the truth, it's not all that good.  We were camping up in the Haliburton area of Northern Ontario, and, after we had all hunkered down for the night; and finished telling all our ghost stories; and finished bragging about how many boobs we had seen; and given up on smacking each other in the head ( because we were young boys, and  young boys smack each other in the head for fun);  a terrible sound arose from the trees above our tent.  What made it so terrible was not the terrible sound itself, but the fact that nobody this side of normal would know the sound just by hearing it - not to mention a group of young boys whose idea of fun was smacking each other in the head -  it was terrible AND it was strange.  I wasn't the bravest in the tent that night, but I wasn't the smartest either. So it was I who was the first to venture outside.  It was - and you may have guessed this already because I have already told that it is a story about a bat - a bat. It wasn't a huge bat, but it was making a huge sound.  Squealing like I'd never heard before or since, and gnarling and hissing - all at the same time.  Somebody shone a flashlight (again, if I was smart, that may have been the first thing I would have done) and we watched this freaking bat freak out for about ten minutes, or at least until it realized what a scene it was making and stopped. See I told you it wasn't a great story.  The next two stories are from Asia, and they're not that good, either, come to think of it.  There is a rainforest in Malaysia that claims to be the oldest in the world.  There is a bat cave in that forest with an entrance buried by boulders, and a mystical aura about it uncoverd only by the tourist guides at the front entrance to the rainforest for your convenience at 20 dollars an hour.  My girlfriend and I decided to check it out without a guide - we were on a budget - so we hiked to the entrance.  Not long after we arrived, a young lady from Colombia, who was obviously NOT on a budget, came with a personal guide.  Now it just so happens that they entered the cave about 30 seconds before we did, and we couldn't help but hear the information that the paid for guide was giving to the crybaby, rich Colombian chick.  The pile of boulders opened up to a massive cavern that housed tens of thousands of, yes, you guessed it, BATS.  There were a few snakes and some big-ass frogs in there too.  It was ptich dark, but we could feel the bats flying between our legs and smell the bat shit under our shoes if we hadn't already slipped on it and it was now under the palms of our hands.  There was a trail that was pretty easy to navigate, IF YOU HAD A GUIDE, which, fortunately we had waited long enough for a rich, crybaby Colombian woman to provide.  (We also had some flashlights, unlike my good buddy Josh who didn't have a flashlight, but, being the "smart guy" that he is, somehow got his flash to go off on his camera and then ran as far as he could see in the brief light.)  We were immersed in bats for a dark, wet, cold, loud, stinky half hour. It was pretty cool, but  if I hadn't seen the "bat" icon in the menu when building this page, I wouldn't have told that story.  The last story is quick.  We were in Sumatra, which is the big northern island of Indonesia, and we saw a dude selling HUGE fruit bats the size of small dogs. They were alive, and hanging upside down, and apparently had the fate of a nice stew to look forward to.  Those are my bat stories.  Thank you. you can return to your real life now. Or back to more stupid stories at the Urban Pig.