She was only the size of a conker, but the sound of her papery wings comforted me at night. It was a lightbulb moment when I realised how utterly reliant she was
When I was growing up, there was a woman in our Devon village called Sylvia, who was known as the Bat Lady. She didn’t live in a grotto dripping with stalactites, but in a 1960s detached four-bedroom house, with carpeting up the side of the bathtub and a serving hatch in the kitchen.
She was known as the Bat Lady not because she stalked alleys in latex, but because she rescued and rehabilitated injured bats. She kept them in her cool, dark loft, in cages she crafted from green netting and planks of recycled wood.
