The camera pans out over a moderately sized town with clean and colorful buildings, surrounded by nature.

Canterlot. A small town in the Western US, which recently got its claim to fame thanks to a series of viral YouTube videos of small colorful horses. But the colorful candy horses shown in those videos aren’t the only unique critters that can be found in this area.

The camera slowly zooms in on the town, getting closer to a particular house as it fades to black. A second later it fades in again, now standing at street level as the cameraman walks towards the house, aiming towards a green man with a question mark for a face who is carrying a large cardboard box full of groceries. There’s a short exchange of greetings and introductions before he opens the door, leading the way into a tiny anteroom separated from the rest of the house by heavy strips of fabric hung up like a curtain. As he closes the front door, there’s a loud and high-pitched shrieking sound from the curtain and the strips of fabric start moving.

Anon Ymous has turned this into a sanctuary for a different kind of tiny equine.

The camera zooms in to show a tiny grey pony, about the size of a fist, with black bat wings and a purple-and-black mane angrily fighting with the strips of fabric she’s gotten tangled in. Meanwhile Anon sets down his box and takes a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves from a small shelf, putting them on.

“Are the curtains to keep them from escaping the house?”

“No, they have several exits for themselves if they want to leave. The curtains are just to keep this one from attacking people when they come in.” Anon steps forward to start untangling the little critter.

“She doesn’t like strangers?”

“Hmm? Oh no, she’d attack me just as quickly. She’s an angry little gremlin who thinks this whole house belongs to her.” As soon as she’s free, the pony pounces at Anon with a loud hiss, fangs bared. He quickly snatches her out of the air, holding her with both hands and keeping her wings trapped as she squirms, hissing and shrieking at him as he brings her close to his face. “You hear that, little missy? You’re a little bratpony.”

The pony hisses once more, glaring at him as he steps into the house still holding her. He takes a moment to hiss back, glaring silently at her and squeezing her lightly for a moment before slowly letting her go. She shakes herself like a cat before turning her nose up and flying away, glaring over her shoulder at him as she escapes into the shadows.

Batponies. Small, pocket-sized equines with leathery wings and dark fur, make a stark contrast from their colorful relatives on the internet. Despite their intimidating aesthetics, they’re actually less dangerous to humans than regular bats, thanks to their hardy immune systems and mostly easygoing nature.

The camera pans over the room to show a few more of the small batponies flying around, zooming in to follow each one for a few seconds before focusing back on Anon setting his box of groceries down on the table… and the two batponies landing on the box, sniffing curiously at the loose produce.

“These are Sunshine Smiles and Frolicsome Meadowlark.” Anon points at the two ponies in turn, who look up to stare at the camera before looking at Anon again and chittering at him.

“Sunshine Smiles? Do all batponies have names that are so…”

“Most of them, yeah. Not Starless Night, though.” Anon points and the camera pans over to a corner of the room where a pair of glowing red eyes peer out of the shadows. The shadows hiss. “Because she’s a bratpony.”

“I see… and is there a reason that one is wearing, uhm…”

The camera moves over to the pair of batponies again, zooming in on Sunshine Smiles to properly show the tiny purple eyepatch he is wearing over his left eye.

There’s an exasperated sigh from off-screen as Sunshine puffs his chest out proudly with his brother chittering at him. “No, he’s just wearing it because he thinks it looks cool.”

There’s a moment of silence as the two ponies jump off the box and take wing, flying towards the kitchen counter… until Sunshine flies face-first into a hanging ladle and bounces off with a dink.

“...yeah.”

The pony shakes his head, looking around in confusion while his brother fusses over him. After a short moment of chittering back and forth they both jump up again, trotting across the counter until they reach a large pot and turning their heads towards Anon to shriek and chitter excitedly.

“Yes yes, I know. I’m getting to it.” Anon chuckles and picks up the pot, filling it up with water at the sink before carrying it over to the stove. He pulls out a cutting board and grabs some vegetables and a block of tofu from the groceries to cut them into slices and chunks, the two bats flying around him and looking over his shoulder. Once everything is dumped into the water, he turns on the stove and steps back. “This is going to take a few minutes, so we’ll handle the fruit next.”

Wiping off the cutting board he pulls a bundle wrapped in newspaper from the bottom of the grocery box, opening it to reveal half a dozen mangoes. Cutting two of them into chunks and arranging them on a plate, he peels and cores the remaining four before pushing a wooden hook through each of them.

Picking up the plate in one hand and the hooks in the other, he walks down another hallway towards a door with a cloth-covered hole at the top. Pausing in front of the door, he holds the plate of mango bits out to the camera.

“Here, can you hold this for a second?”

The plate disappears down the bottom of the screen and Anon steps forward, turning the door handle and pulling it open to reveal a screeching wave of grey fur and black wings bursting out towards the camera. The view tumbles and spins for a moment before ending up aimed at the ceiling, showing close-ups of shiny fangs and fuzzy grey muzzles as various batponies lean in to sniffer and snuffle at the lens.

Mangoes are the batponies’ favorite treat. They can get… very excited about them.

The camera slowly moves up again, turning to show the dropped plate of mango bits and various batponies nibbling and chewing on them or tussling over them with excited chitters and shrieks. One of the bats is still hanging off the camera, leaning in upside down to keep pressing her muzzle against the lens with loud sniffering and snuffering.

After a few moments, the camera moves away from the bats fighting over the mango bits to instead show the inside of the bat sanctuary, a large room with chain link mesh along the ceiling and various branches and sticks spread out between larger plants. Anon is in the center of the room, hanging the rest of the mangos off the ceiling mesh in between several batponies still hanging from the mesh by their tails.

While mangoes are the most anticipated treat, tastes between different batponies can still vary. Not every bat is in the mood for fruit.

The camera shows a large cloud of ponies following after Anon as he walks out of the sanctuary and back into the kitchen. Moving over to the pot on the stove, he lifts up the lid to show it just starting to bubble.

“Now, we don’t actually want this to boil. This should be just the right temperature.”

He turns off the stove, picking up a stack of large bowls and a ladle and portioning out hot water with tofu and vegetables. Setting the bowls on the kitchen table, he dips a finger into one to test the temperature before giving a short whistle. Immediately the cloud of batponies dives down with happy shrieks, splashing water across the floor and table as they land in the bowls two or three at a time.

“They saw me eating soup and… well. Now they want their daily dinner bath time.” Anon gestures to the bats either spreading out and relaxing in the hot water or splashing it at each other, occasionally grabbing a piece of food to nibble on or shove into their mouth.

Cleanliness is next to hungriness, it seems.

The camera pans away from the bath bowls towards a single batpony with fuzzy ears and a two-toned dark and light blue mane, staring up at Anon with wide eyes.

“This is Echo. She likes mangoes… a lot. So we had to set some boundaries to keep her from stealing the other ponies’ food.” He reaches over into the box, pulling out one last large mango and holding it up. Echo’s pupils dilate visibly, mouth hanging open with a bit of drool hanging off it as she stares at it.

“Alright, Echo, this one’s yours.”

The bat’s ears perk up and she hisses, jumping up into the air with a strong flap of her wings and glomping onto the fruit, digging her hooves in and gnawing on the skin to slowly dig a hole, more and more of her gradually disappearing into the fruit as she digs deeper and deeper.

“Like I said, she needs a mango of her own.” Anon picks up the now empty cardboard box, carrying it and the mango over into the living room and setting them down on the table before walking over to a desk to start pulling out things: different sizes of scissors, markers, tape and a few small pots of paint with paintbrushes. Sitting back down at the table, he takes a knife and starts cutting the cardboard box apart.

“I always get my groceries in a large box if I can, so I can use it for this.”

Drawing some designs on the cardboard with a pencil and then lining them properly with the markers, he starts cutting them out and painting them in dark blue, dark purple, grey and silver.

The camera pans over to several batponies gradually converging around him and landing on the table to watch, some of them wearing helmets and carrying spears made out of painted cardboard. One of them shuffles forward and holds out a bent cardboard spear until Anon carefully takes it from him and wraps some extra tape around it until it’s straight again, getting a happy whinny from the bat. He picks up one of the cut out pieces and carefully folds it around the bat’s barrel until it looks like a little suit of armor.

“Some of them like to fly out at night to the house down the street. The one from the videos. You’ve seen them, right? They like to visit the blue one and hang around playing guards or something. I’m not entirely sure I understand it, but wearing formal armor like this makes them happy.” He folds up an armor around another bat, gently rubbing its mane between the ears before sending it off.

“Urp.”

The camera moves away from the guard rotation to the spot where Anon had set down the mango, now showing a batpony sprawled out on her back with a cartoonishly round belly. She lets out another little burp, tongue hanging out happily.

“All full now, Echo?” Anon chuckles and grabs the bat with both hands, picking her up and lifting her over into his lap to slowly pet her, occasionally grabbing her muzzle for her to sniffer and lick at his fingers. “You big silly loaf of bat. You’re a big loaf, you hear? You’re a big round bread bat.”

The camera holds on the view of him petting and brushing the bat’s mane, closing music playing.

If you see a batpony, don’t let the darker colors and glowing eyes scare you off. While perhaps not as famous as their colorful counterparts, batponies can be just as friendly, social and curious.

“Speaking of breads, you might want to watch out for that one.”

“What-?”

The camera turns just in time to catch a purple and grey blur flying towards it. The shot freezes on a closeup of Starless Night barreling towards the camera with her fangs on display.

SCRIPT...................................................................River Road

DIRECTOR..............................................................River Road

CAMERA.................................................Slippery Slope (RIP)

Special Thanks to Anon’s Bat Sanctuary in Canterlot, OR

A Production of DE//SO//LICIOUS ENTERTAINMENT

Author's Note

In a lucky coincidence, my friend finished the Starless Night picture (recolor of a Flutterbat screenshot from the show) right on Desolator's birthday. So this counts as a Christmas gift and a birthday gift now!