The great bat capers

People should be allowed to go to bed when they want to. In fact, that should be in our Constitutional Amendments: Thou shalt go to bed and have a good night's rest as often as desired.

Nowhere would it say that one's sleep should be interrupted by bats. No siree!

Sunday night, just as David and I were getting ready for bed, he happened to walk back toward the kitchen to fetch something and saw something swoop across the living room. When there's swooping involved, you know right away you're in trouble. Moths flit; big things swoop. In my mind, bats are big things. Icky big things.

Having witnessed the swooping, he hightails it down the hallway and announces to me that we have a bat in the living room.

Me: What? A bat? Are you sure?

David: Yes, I'm sure. I just saw it flying around out there.

Me: But we were just out there five minutes ago, and I didn't see or hear a bat.

David: I know, but it's there now.

For some odd reason, I needed to see for myself. I just couldn't believe that the space we had occupied all of three minutes ago now was housing a real live bat.

So I hopped out of bed and wandered down the hall while David looked around for bat-capturing or at least bat-moving devices.

As I wandered down the hall, I heard it first: that tiny chirp chirp that belongs only to bats. That was enough to make me shiver. As I fumbled and found the living room light switches, the bat took flight. I dropped to the floor, splayed flat out, hands on my head. This particular stance was reminiscent of tornado drills in elementary school, perhaps a bit of an overkill for one very small, but boisterous bat.

David showed up at this point, wielding one of Noah's plastic baby gates. It's not a small gate, but he thought he could "shoo" the bat with it. I think he managed to swipe the air with the gate once or twice before the bat settled on the upper bricks of our fireplace wall.

With the bat heaving in fear, but not moving, I decided it was an ideal time to capture a picture of it (you know, for posterity's sake). While I was scrounging around for the camera, David went in search of his fishing net.

Now armed with a camera, I bravely skulked across the living floor to draw closer and closer to the bat. As you can tell by this first picture, I only got within 10 feet, maximum, of that winged creature.



By then, David was back with the net. He began waving the net wildly in the air, which sent the bat airborne again, landing for short stays in various spots in our living room: the fireplace, the fake tree, etc. During one of these stays, I was able to capture this very intimidating picture. I mean, look at those teeth!



Sometime during this chase scene, I offered to open our front door so there would be a place for the bat to exit. I figured that was key to the success of our mission (get bat OUT!). He agreed, but then noticed how intensely both of our cats were watching the chase scene. If I opened that front door without first removing them from the room, they would certainly chase that bat right outside (and since they're indoor cats, that could be a real problem).

So I wrangled two very excited, squirming kitties out of the living room while David tried to contain the bat in our fake tree (a ficus maybe?), nestled behind our TV.

The next part is a little fuzzy. I know I returned, opened the door and gave David the all-clear for bat removal. But I'm not sure exactly how he wrestled that little bugger from there; I was too busy ducking in the tornado-drill position. The next time I looked up, David had the bat in the net and was heading to the front door.

I watched (from the comfort of my crouch) him chuck the entire net out the front door, not wanting to risk the bat getting loose inside again.

It only took a moment or two for the bat to find its way out of the net and off into the dark, black night.

With the bat heading home, we were finally cleared for the comfort of our bed. Mission accomplished!