Wait, I think I've confused your name. Will email.

Whoa.

I can look out my kitchen window and see the fire in the mountains. It looks like lava.

Congrats on the move, Jesse.

Allyson, I love hearing about Sam. Always makes me happy.

Don't like fire.

I hope it's better than a nicely stacked pile of paper when it's done.

long-delayed Cheerios:

If you live on an island, you probably should assume you'll do everything on that island. If you live on Whidbey, don't ever assume you'll come to Seattle for anything other than an Event. I used to live in Mukilteo - the other end of the W...

oops, lost the rest of the cut & paste, but thank you plei, barb, stunt husband, for the info. Wonderful to have my curiosity satisfied!

And the info about Mukilteo ferries taking 3, 4 rounds and several hours. EGAD - that is horrifying. So, yeah, maybe in retirement, but not during work life.

I found all these nifty cottage communities in the PNW via browsing around real estate from Bainbridge to Pt. Townsend. [link] The pocket neighborhood spots are SO COOL!

Wait, I think I've confused your name. Will email.

My real first name is my profile email address. My last name, which I hate, is Polish. In a bizarre coincidence (given your main Parisian character), my mother's maiden name, which I thought I might use for publishing once upon a time, is Clocher (i.e., bell tower or steeple).

Whew! That's what I thought. You're now perched on the Eiffel tower with Jacqueline and Aurore (my French student who just went back to University). Pierre and Sebastien are trying desperately to impress you by divebombing tourists below. You are not impressed.

My bat arrives in Sydney on Qantas, and then has to find his way to the zoo, and then find his way to the flying fox exhibit. How impossible is this? Also, if you've been to the flying fox exhibit, do you remember what they sound like?

Certainly possible. The entire distance from airport to zoo would be around 12 km as the bat flies. Kingsford-Smith Airport is unusually close to the city. It's on the shores of Botany Bay, south of the City (the plane would probably land on the north-south runway, the longer runway, which means flying in low over the Bay). You can see the city buildings pretty easily from there.

I think the city building of greatest interest to a bat is likely to be the Sydney Tower [link] You probably can't see it directly from the airport, but it's easily visible from, say, Hyde Park. From the Tower you can see the more iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House (though the view is partly obscured by the octagonal MLC Centre, which incidentally also contains the Australian HQ of my old employer, so I've spent a lot of time there); you can also see the Zoo.

Sydney City is on the southern shore of Port Jackson (which is a truly spectacular harbour, made by a truly insignificant river). Taronga Zoo is on the north shore of Port Jackson, in roughly a northeasterly direction from the city. (There are ferries that run from the city to the zoo, which is a great way for landbound people to make the journey.)

I'm afraid it's been some years since I last visited Taronga Zoo, so I can't help out with the layout of the bat enclosure. I'd describe the sound of fruit bats as a screeching chatter. (If you have access to it, flying foxes appear in Episode 8 of David Attenborough's Life of Mammals - Life in the Trees. I think they, like Taronga's holding, are grey-headed flying foxes.

Final piece of trivia: each year, Taronga Zoo takes in several orphaned baby flying foxes, raises them until they can care for themselves and then releases them back into the wild.

(Also worth noting: in the 80s and 90s, some researchers postulated that fruit bats were actually more closely related to the primates than microchiroptera, which would mean that mammalian flight evolved twice. Genetic studies have since confirmed that all bats share a common origin.)

In conclusion, let me say that the short-beaked echidna can lift twice its own body weight, and can push the weight of a fridge.

There are many, many fruit bats in the Sydney Botanical Gardens [link] [link] They're quite loud. As billytea says, it's screechy and when there are a bunch together it sounds like a pretty heated conversation. They certainly have no fear of humans. When I was only a couple of feet from them, they just sort of muttered at me like "I'm trying to sleep here."

In conclusion, let me say that the short-beaked echidna can lift twice its own body weight, and can push the weight of a fridge.

Are there many instances of refrigerator-moving echidnas?