Entry #23 - Leaving Jerusalem for the Bats of Ramat Gan
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007After six months we manage to sell the apartment in Jerusalem and buy one in Ramat Gan.
There were only a few single-family homes in our Neve Granot neighborhood by the Israel Museum, so all the park space and the nearby Hebrew University campus gave it a suburban feel. As you can see from the satellite photo of Jerusalem to the left, it was about a 25 minute walk to the Old City.
The new neighborhood in Ramat Gan was not a dog friendly place. And the population density almost panicked me. I have lived in urban portions of San Francisco and LA, and there is no comparison. Instead, the human density in Ramat Gan reminded me of Mexico City. Look at the satellite photo below. Every one of those boxes represents a three to five story apartment building. Miles of them.
In the middle of my claustrophobic nightmare I am rescued by Egyptian Fruit Bats (see entry #5). Wandering a downtown street at 10PM one evening feeling far from alone, I notice some large pigeons flying about a sizable mulberry tree. But wait, even though there is a lot of street light, pigeons don’t fly at night. Those are bats. Russian teenagers are sharing cigarettes below, completely indifferent to the large mammals fluttering over their heads. And I am getting very excited. Over and over again, I feel much more like a tourist here in Israel than anywhere else I’ve been. These bats must fly in from far off caves in the hills. Somehow they know where the productive fruit trees are and when they are in season.
After I saw those bats, I began to notice them everywhere at night in Ramat Gan. It’s definitely cool to see the huge bats winging silently between apartment buildings at night. Flickr Fruit Bat set.икони