This Australian town is being completely overrun by 100,000 giant bats

I’ll let you in on a secret: Australia isn’t some animal-filled deathtrap that’s waiting to devour delicious Americans. The breadth and danger of Australia’s wildlife is greatly over-exaggerated in the USA, to the point where every single person asks me about spiders and snakes when I mention I’m from Australia. Truth be told, the most dangerous situation I got into was getting drunk as a 15-year-old and being threatened by professional wrestler Scott Steiner in the Sydney casino -- but that’s a story for another time.

Dangerous animals exist. Many of the stories are overblown. This one absolutely is not. Batemans Bay is a picturesque tourist destination on New South Wales’ south coast, and it’s now completely infested with giant bats.

Flowering trees are prompting the bats to swarm the town in unprecedented numbers. Current estimates are that there are 100,000 bats in Batemans Bay alone, compared to the mere 11,000 citizens. People are being forced to stay indoors because of the flying foxes, which thankfully only eat fruit.

Nonetheless, this is an Australian animal story that should frighten you. Not the hyper-poisonous snakes or spiders that barely anyone dies of, but a friggin’ locust swarm of bats forcing people to stay inside.