The last couple of nights here at Maho we've been hearing strange noises between the hours of 8pm and 5am. Those of us living in staff section and guests staying in upper "E" section have been listening to very loud "thumps" randomly every 5-30 seconds or so, the sound of what could be a faulty screen door? perhaps the wind blowing a roll-down against wood? a pirate with a peg-leg dancing on the boardwalks? The actual culprit? Bats! Lots of Bats!
When daylight broke yesterday morning everyone living under the large Genip tree in staff section found their tents and boardwalk covered in half-eaten genips! While genips are certainly tasty and fun to eat, nobody could have eaten as many as we found along the boardwalk and ground. It must have been the work of "fruit bats," as we have now named them. This was confirmed last night, as the original bats told all of their friends about the wonderful genips to be had in upper staff section, resulting in a whole colony of bats setting up shop eating the ripe genips. This wouldn't be so troubling if when they ate the fruit they were considerate enough to drop the seed on the ground. Instead the seeds keep falling on our boardwalks, creating quite a noise.
One possible solution this morning was to cut down all the fruit in the tree, but there was a slight problem: the tree is huge and towers over the entire area with thousands of little genip fruits. Guess we'll have to wait until the fruit is no longer to their liking, or they finish the entire fruit in the tree!
Pictured above is a genip seed on the railing, with the outer shell peeled off, below on the boardwalk is a sampling of what we dealt with this morning.
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