Woman forced to leave home after 'thousands' of dead bats fall from trees in heatwave
A woman has been forced to leave her home after thousands of dead bats fell from trees and their rotting carcasses filled her home with a powerful stench.
Philippa Schroor was driven out of her home in Edmonton, 15 kilometres south of Cairns, by the smell of dead bats.
Ms Schoor lived next to a spectacled flying fox colony that recently succumbed to extreme heat conditions and fell off trees.
She is concerned about hygiene and has left her home to escape the foul odour.
“Last night I drove my kids to Gordonvale to stay with friends because the smell was coming through the air cons and burning our skin, so my walls and sheets are impregnated with the smell,” Ms Schoor told local outlet Tropic Now.
“Yesterday I had maggots all over our floor and I couldn’t figure out where they were from but we probably have dead bats on our roof.”
Ms Schoor expressed concern about the ongoing heatwave, where parts of the region exceeded 37C.
“It was a scene out of a horror movie and there is still putrefied rotting carcasses are everywhere,” she told The Cairns Post.
The mass death was captured by Cairns resident Lisa Eagleton, who posted photographs of dead and dying bats on social media.
“Another horrific heartbreaking day with the flying foxes,” Ms Eagleton wrote on Facebook on November 27.
“Hundreds dead – hundreds orphaned.”
Ms Eagleton wrote that the bats were “literally falling from the trees” due to extreme heat. She said she had been collecting the carcasses in wheelbarrows.
A Queensland wildlife sanctuary was forced to euthanise more than 200 baby bats on the same weekend, as temperature records that have stood for 70 years were shattered in “unprecedented” heatwave conditions.
