Sure, it was freezing and awful during the polar vortex but it could be worse: You could live in a place where it's so hot out that tens of thousands of dead bats are falling from the sky and then rotting on the ground.

That's what happened this week in Australia, where an intense heatwave—temperatures have reached 122 F – caused at least 100,000 bats to die in southern Queensland.

"It's a horrible, cruel way to die," a conservation worker, Louise Saunders, told The Courier Mail. "Anything over 43 degrees [Celsius, 109F] and they just fall. We're just picking up those that are just not coping and are humanely euthanising what we can."

Trash collectors have been tasked with cleaning up streets lined with the carcasses, the smell from which has reached larger cities like Brisbane, while hundreds of dead bats remain in trees and bushes, being consumed by maggots.

"As they succumb, they just fall in heaps at the base of trees," Saunders said. "You can have 250 or more — it's like dripping chocolate — all dying at the base of trees."

Suddenly, the cold doesn't seem so bad.

[Image via AP]