Riki is an adult female Grey-Headed Flying-Fox who was hanging inside a pool enclosure with her feet hooked into the fence fittings.
The member of public could hear and see she had a baby on her.
When I got there, she had twins.
Twins aren't common in rescues. We don't know how common twin births are in the wild. We do occasionally see mums with a baby under each wing in the early part of the season, but they can't fly with growing babies who will weigh up to half their bodyweight by the time the babies are thermoregulating and able to be left in the colony overnight.
Generally the weaker twin drops off leaving mum with a single baby she can manage to raise.
I often wonder if some of the scrawny babies we find on the ground in the absence of a dead or injured mum bat around, are the weaker of twins who have dropped off.
Riki has hit her head - you can see she's got a head tilt. She is unable to care for her babies at this stage, so the babies have been taken from her while she's recovering. She didn't even fight the removal of the babies. She had no milk, and both babies and Riki were quite dehydrated. I think Riki has been on the ground for a couple of days.
The babies, Klingon and Velcro, are male and female. Little Velcro is tiny and about 10 days less developed than Klingon, who is aged 2 weeks from his measurements.
Velcro may have been conceived a week or 2 later than Klingon, and born prematurely when he was born. She may have been from a different father.
We're waiting to see how Riki goes - when she's ready to take her babies back. Sometimes after a head injury the mums don't want their babies back. Riki is in care with a carer who has other females with babies, so she will hopefully keep her milk supply and stay in baby mode while she's recovering.
I don't know when we're going to try to reunite mum and babies. It has to be when Riki is ready.
I don't know if she'll accept them back. If she won't, the babies will be raised by carers.
If she does accept them, the trio will be in care till the babies are independent, sometime in February or March next year.
In care, Riki will be able to raise her babies, because she doesn't have to carry them around while flying, and because there will always be enough food for her to support her growing babies.
UPDATE 5 days later:
The twins' mum Riki was improving enough that her twins were reunited with her. Sometimes this is a tricky process where the baby may not want mum or the mum may not want her baby back, but Riki just took the twins back and the babies went straight onto her like they'd only been away a few minutes.
YAY I love happy endings.
Further update January 2019:
Riki wasn't coping with both babies, so a decision was made to remove Velcro who wasn't doing all that well on mum. Velcro had significant feeding issues and was a difficult baby in care for a few weeks, then she started to grow and thrive. She was renamed Ruby Tuesday by her carer.
Being probably a premature birth, she took a while to catch up with her apparent age. She will be going to creche in the next week.
Klingon was an easy baby and was raised by Riki. He's gone to creche already and will be released in early march with the other creche babies in his group.
Riki remains in care, still with problems from her head injury. She is gradually making incremental improvements.
July 2019 update: I lost track of Riki in the system. I'm not sure if she was released or if she didn't make it. I neglected (deliberately) to follow up on her because at the time everything was dying and I didn't want to know if she was released or not. Bats unable to be released are euthanased. Riki wasn't able to be released at the same time as her babies because she wasn't well enough, but I don't know if she actually improved or not.
Sorry I can't give you a definite ending, but I don't have that info and I'm not going to ask.
Tolga Bat Hospital takes donations for me. Tolga is an awesome place in Far North Queensland, which has charity status. By sending donations to them, they get a percentage (and deserve every cent) and they can allocate money to me for batty expenses without it becoming part of my income stream (which makes tax time difficult).
tolgabathospital.org/donate/
Mention Megabattie or Meg in the PayPal message box and the money will find its way to me.
If no message box appears, please email Jenny to tell her that the money is for me.
IMPORTANT: If you pay through the PayPal Giving Fund, can you please email Jenny with the AMOUNT DONATED and the name under which you have donated, OR just forward along the PP receipt.
The Giving Fund doesn’t charge any fees (so the bats get more money) but PP doesn’t itemise out the amount, they just send a total every month, and we don’t know if the money is for Tolga or for Megabattie.
Here’s Jenny’s email.
jenny@tolgabathospital.org