Submachine 6, plus a nested digression on bats

[truepenny]

Since the foul fiend Insomnia continues to maul me in its batrachian* paws and slobber down my neck, many thanks and a tip of the hat to kate_nepveu, who pointed out to me that there is a new Submachine installment: Submachine 6: the edge.

N.b., the game will make marginally more sense if you have a passing acquaintance with the previous Submachine games. But only marginally. Nevertheless, for your point-and-click pleasure:

• Submachine 1: the Basement
  
• Submachine 2: the Lighthouse
  
• Submachine 3: the Loop
  
• Submachine 4: the Lab
  
• Submachine 5: the root

There are also two side games:

• Submachine 0: the Ancient Adventure
  
• Submachine: Future Loop Foundation

And now, having once again interrupted your Very Serious Business, I'm going to see if I can find those secret areas I missed the first time around.

---
*I did have to look up batrachian to be sure I was spelling it right. Which, by the happy serendipity of the alphabet, has led me to a question. Batophobia, it turns out, is the fear of being next to a very tall object, like a skyscraper or a mountain. Does anyone know, then, what's the word for fear of bats?**

**To make this less utterly irrelevant to everything ever, I shall inform you that mirrorthaw and I had another bat in our attic last weekend. Once again, the lovely lovely people from Bat Conservation of Wisconsin came out--at 7 P.M. on a Friday no less--and identified, assessed, sexed, and conserved the bat. Healthy female Big Brown Bat (which, as I remarked later to matociquala, looks to the casual observer like any little brown bat, but in fact Little Brown Bats are a different species). The bat-lady also told us something which I think might possibly be of interest to other people: bats like to burrow into or under laid insulation (the stuff that looks like cotton candy) to hibernate. So if, like us, you have a house where the previous owners thought it was a good idea to lay the insulation on the attic floor like a carpet . . . well, be careful, is all I'm saying.

ObPSA: Do not touch any bats you may find. For your sake and theirs. Bat World has a very helpful page on what to do if you find a bat and also links to local rescue organizations. Our local rescue organization is awesome; I hope others are the same.

Comments

[wyldlingspirit.livejournal.com]

Wow. In Missouri if you find a bat in your home people come and exterminate them. With prejudice.

[herewiss13.livejournal.com]

I would assume "fear of bats" would be some more correct variant of chiropterophobia as "chiroptera" is the 'Science' for bat.

[technomom]

Yep, chiroptophobia.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you both!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

...identified, assessed, sexed, and conserved the bat.

Now in my head is a picture of a pantry, with shelves full of canned things including jars labeled "Bat Conserve".

It's all your fault.

Three things about bats

[alex51324.livejournal.com]

In college I lived in an old house (mansion, actually. It was the Best Apartment Ever. Sometimes I wish I still lived there.) that had been converted into apartments--human-apartments and also bat-apartments; if you stood outside at dusk you could watch them billow out of the roof like it was on fire. They used to get into the apartment every now and then, and one time my very elderly (and also declawed) cat caught one somehow. He was understandably proud of himself. I was asleep when it happened and only know about it because he was still carrying it around the next morning. I hypothesize that it flew into a window and knocked itself out, and all he really did was pick it up off the floor.

Cuteoverload has some really cool bat pictures right now: http://cuteoverload.com/2009/10/14/roger-roger-whats-our-vector-victor/
They're only sort of cute, but they're really cool.

Re: Three things about bats

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

If you didn't hear anything, then, yeah, your cat was probably only incidental to the poor bat's doom. We once--thankfully only once, and I am knocking on wood right now--had a bat get into the house. At 5 A.M. They scream when attacked, and believe me, it is not a noise you can sleep through.

(Happily, the cats did not succeed in catching the bat, and we eventually got it outside again with no harm done to anyone, except our respective stress levels.)

I saw those pictures when the story originally ran (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1213851/Stunning-shots-thirsty-bats-swooping-lick-water-garden-pond.html), and yes, they are Teh Awesome.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm afraid it really is.

Also, that totally sounds like a Charles Addams cartoon.

Re: Three things about bats

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I love bats. I desperately want flying foxes, but my husband is a big meanie and says no.

I went to Wells College, which is batly relevant because for three of the four years I lived in the somewhat prosaically named Main Building. Main has, among other things, an attic and a bell tower. And of course, bats. Security had a net for catching the inevitable misguided bat, and some mornings we'd go into the dining hall (connected to Main) to find one sleeping on one of the window screens.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

My brain scares me sometimes.