Thai farmers look to bats as free, flying food

They've been scarfing bats down in Baan Toom for as long as anyone can remember, roasting the little, flying beasts on spits over charcoal fires or mincing them up into a traditional Thai dish.

The farmers say the meat is delicious, and, with a big smile, they claim it also gives them sexual powers.

While their hamlet appears idyllic, it sits in the northeastern province of Kalasin, the poorest region in Thailand, where local officials say incomes average barely $70 a month. The lack of money means few comforts, and the work in the paddy fields is backbreaking and hot.

But there are compensations, the villagers say--the abundance of free food.

When the farmers fancy something different for dinner, they leave their rice seedlings, wade out of the bath-warm paddies, grab a net and long poles and go bat hunting.

The quarry is a creature of habit and it takes just a few minutes to reach the bats' regular hangouts--the sugar-palm trees that shade the dikes above this water-logged landscape.

Before springing the trap, Kamgong Phunasee chants an incantation in the local dialect, asking the bats' forgiveness for what awaits them. The 66-year-old says he doesn't know the proper Thai to translate his words--they are magic words learned from his father and grandfather.

There is nothing magical about the hunt. The farmers crash poles into the trees and bats tumble down into the waiting net in a cascade of broken foliage and flapping wings.

"It's not hard to catch them. They just fall right out of the tree. Other times we smoke them out," says Supan Insang, the group's "Batcatcher-General," who claims to have bagged as many as 200 in a single day.