Our Adventure in the Night and the Run-In with the Bats…

Tonight, we did the third leg of our zoo visits and went to the Singapore Night Safari!  The Night Safari is a zoo dedicated to nocturnal animals and observing them when they’re the most active–at night!  When we arrived, we were greeted by Malaysian tribal dancers wearing loin clothes and spitting fire while chanting.  They then did some Chinese acrobatic/Cirque de Soleil type maneuvers.  It was definitely the best tribal dance we had ever seen!

Somewhat bored after the fourth “number,” we entered the park and attended the “Creatures of the Night” show.  The show opened with a giant Binturong (think giant 50 pound possum) walking on a vine suspended only a few feet above the crowd.  The Binturong then entertained us by hanging upside down mere inches from some of the spectators.  This thing was awesome!  John wanted one:)  A few acts later, the crew had claimed to have “lost one of the animals,” and told us all to watch our feet and check in our bags.  Of course, this made me nervous–it’s very dark and there are strange Asian animals I had never heard of running around!  Then, suddenly, the crew knew exactly where it was!  They marched to a couple of compartments under the audience members’ feet.  They checked one–nothing there.  They checked the second compartment and many of the female members of the crowd began to scream.  A giant python was pulled out of the compartment–he had been sitting under the audience for the entire beginning of the show!!!  Now, if you know me well, you know I HATE snakes.  I was suspicious for the rest of the evening:)  The rest of the show was fabulous and fascinating with a cat that could jump 15 feet to catch low flying birds and otters that knew how to recycle.

From there, we started to explore the park.  All of the exhibits are outdoors and therefore, very dark (remember, it is night time) with a few stragetic spotlights to display the animals.  We saw giraffes, zebras, flying squirrels and many other animals who took a cue from the darkness and went to sleep.  Then we made a pit stop at the Z’bar.  See for yourself:)

We were tight with the Zebra!

Next was perhaps the most interesting part of the evening–the Mangrove Bat walk.  Again, the walk was dark with only a few lights placed so that you could view the bats in their simulated natural habitat.  We were on a boardwalk suspended about 10 feet above a swamp (even with the tree tops) looking for bats!  Little did we know (until we read the informative posters) that these bats were Malaysian Bats–the largest in the world!  Boy, they were a sight to see!  They were hanging upside down in trees and eating fruit the zoo keepers had put out for them.  There were also smaller, more spastic bats in the enclosure that liked to fly very close to our heads.  One brushed my leg while I was looking at a massive bat–from that point on I had an iron grip on John’s arm.  We even saw two big bats duke it out over territory.  Their screams are deafening and those big wings mean business.  The loser had to fly to the other side of the swamp.

All of a sudden, we saw a stream of rushing water coming at us from the sky.  We were still in the Bat Cave and had no idea what this could possibly be.  Then, we looked up.  One of the giant bats was relieving itself onto the pathway directly in front of us!  Grossed out and laughing so hard we could hardly stand it, we exited trying to avoid the inevitable splashes of this “natural” occurence.  We were successful.  Well, mostly.

The rest of our tour consisted of lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), leopards, warthogs, hyenas, deer, and even a strange fish that looked like a bass/eel hybrid.  That’s the beauty of going to zoos on the other side of the world–you never know what you’re going to find!!!

Our first safari in the darkness was successful–more adventures soon!