Two neo-traditional tattoos on the lower legs: a grey bat hanging upside down from a branch, and a pastel bird with a pink flower.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hanging bat and pastel bird on two legs

Neo-trad · Calf · Mixed · Photo

Two tattoos sit side by side on a pair of lower legs. On the left, a grey bat hangs upside down from a bare branch with a single leaf, shaded in black and grey with bold outlines. On the right, a pastel bird hangs from a branch with a pink flower, its body filled with pink, purple and teal bands and a small yellow beak.

Neo-trad Calf Bat Bird Flower Branch Leaf

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bat came in through the scullery window on Tuesday, the same night the Harrisons packed up their two boys and left without settling the last week. I found it hanging from the curtain rail by its feet, its wings folded round it like a wet umbrella, and I did what Mother always did, which was to drape a tea towel over it and leave it be until morning.

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Mr Fenwick, in the attic room, took one look at it and laughed until he had to sit down on the stairs. He said the creature belonged to an island his grandfather sailed to, where they hang from the trees by the hundred, and that it had simply followed the wrong boat home. He asked for a saucer of milk and a clothes peg, and I thought him soft in the head, but he fixed a twig to the landing rail with great care and the bat took to it as if it had been waiting years.

He left on Thursday before the first train. This morning I found a small bird on the mat outside his door, made of painted silk pulled tight over a wire frame, pink and purple and a green like the inside of a shell. Its beak was yellow and there was a paper note tied to its foot that read, in a careful hand, For the girl who sweeps the stairs. Hang it up, don't keep it. It was never meant to stay still.

So I have hung it beside the bat, one on each side of the landing window where the light comes in off the sea. The bat sleeps through the morning with its head down. The bird turns on its wire every time a door opens. Neither of them has ever looked like it was waiting for anything, which is more than I can say for the rest of us, Ada, and more than I can say for myself.