The short-tailed bats arrive in Greymouth in 1999. Their provenance is unclear, but they make their new home in the memorial park in the centre of town, in the old war trees. They like hollows and they get into any burrow or culvert. There are three hundred of them in the park: endangered, pug-nosed, feral. They forage all over town by night. All the park’s trees are dying, and the war memorial is covered in their fruity purple guano.

Matthew and Rowan love the bats. Roey enjoys the opportunity to observe a vulnerable species in proximity, and Matthew likes the bats personally; he thinks their physical ugliness is like his own. The bats, like Matthew, have weak arms and prominent teeth.