A commuter train rolling toward Glasgow picked up an unscheduled passenger over the weekend: a bat that flew the length of the carriage while riders ducked, laughed and, in at least one case, screamed.
Passenger Lesley McLellan filmed the encounter Saturday aboard a ScotRail service running between Gourock, in Renfrewshire, and Glasgow Central, according to UPI's report on the footage. The animal was first spotted flitting around the carriage somewhere between the Cartsdyke and Bogston stations, on the western stretch of the line outside Greenock, before working its way toward passengers seated further back.
Footage shared on the Inverclyde Community & Road Watch Facebook page, and picked up by Yahoo News, shows a ScotRail staff member trying to shoo the bat toward an open door using the nearest tool at hand: a Saltire flag. The improvised attempt only sent the animal higher, where it settled briefly in the luggage rack while a ticket inspector tried to coax it back down.
Passengers can be heard reacting somewhere between panic and delight as the animal looped overhead, and the bat was eventually persuaded to leave the way it came. According to witnesses, it took a second improvised tool, a passenger's hat waved near the doorway, to convince the animal to fly out through the open doors at the next stop, bringing the brief in-carriage flight to an end.
Local coverage of the episode noted it is not the first time Scotland's rail network has had an unplanned wildlife encounter this year, though a bat loose in a moving carriage is an unusual one even by those standards. ScotRail has not said how the animal came to be on board, and none of the accounts of the episode identify which of Scotland's native bat species was responsible for the brief disruption.
No injuries, to bat or passenger, were reported.
