What I Learned about Bats

I feel like I’m back in grade school writing a paper: “What I learned about Bats”. As with any crises there is always The Aftermath, where one regroups, reflects, and resolves on a plan of action to smother any reoccurrence of said crises: the three R’s of crises management, as it were.

Because I do not generally possess large amounts of free time, I spent only a few minutes the morning following our escapade with the bat (see “Things that go BUMP in the night”) to look up some basic facts about these mammals.

Here is what I learned:

· Bats are not rodents, but are more closely associated with the shrew. Shrews, unlike rodents, have five toes instead of four.
· Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight.
· Their fangs are so small and sharp that it can be difficult to locate a bite even when one is known to have occurred.
· Signs of rabies in a bat may include crawling along the ground or aggressiveness. Infected persons may not show signs of rabies for upwards of one month or, in rare cases, as long as one year.
· Bat droppings (or guano) can play host to a fungus which, when the spores are inhaled, can cause a lung infection called Histoplasmosis in humans.
· A bat needs only an area about one-half of an inch high to squeeze into your child’s bedroom.

To justify myself in not worrying about the interloper I called the pediatrician’s office. The nurse laughed so heartily at me while I imparted to him of the basic details of the previous night that he started to cough. Actually, I think he may have had a cold and that probably contributed more to the coughing than the laughter. At any rate, I felt myself absolved to continue in my worry-free state of mind in reference to the bat.

The Internet is a great fountain of knowledge when it comes to identifying animal feces. After reviewing a few pictures, I made a quick circuit of the house and even ventured into the attic to look for droppings. I believe I am becoming somewhat of an expert on recognizing all sorts of creature waste (see “In other news…”). I shall list that among my other life accomplishments.

My husband's version of "Things that go BUMP in the night"

Here is what REALLY happened
By Sean

Earlier, my wife posted in her blog what I'll call a lovely little fable regarding the infiltration and subsequent savage attack upon my home, children and person by a ferocious mutant bat. In this story, there were charming and amusing details outlining how I bumbled about mostly in terror and by virtue of an accident managed to exorcise said bat. Women have this tendency to understate details of traumatic events in order to keep a grounded sense of reality, ignoring the outlandish aspects of the truth because acknowledging that such abject horrors exist would be a threat to her sanity.

Here is what REALLY happened...

10:45 PM: I am laying in bed, about to slip into a well-deserved and justified sleep after a hard day's work. I hear a murmured voice from down the hall, my wife, trying to converse with me in her usual manner- from thirty feet away, facing the opposite direction and with at least two walls in between. I wait for her to, inevitably, repeat herself.

11:08 PM: "Honey, there's a bat in here." She annunciates and speaks at an appropriate volume. I spring out of bed and charge down the hall to where my children sleep. "Help, help, Oh Help!" My wife whimpers at me. I say, "Get the children and get out of here!" and step into the room. The beast is circling around the ceiling in a menacing way, it's vast leathery wings more akin to an Andean condor than a common brown bat. It's wingbeats sound like a thick carpet being shaken out, and it's loveless black eyes shimmer, each one the size of a marble. Green liquid, which I can only assume is venom, glistens on it's bared fangs.

11:09 PM: My wife, forsaking her children, flees the room.

11:11 PM: The vicious bat, having not killed anything yet, is growing agitated. It lunges for one of my children, its massive bat ears (each one as big as my hand) twitch with fury. I swipe at it bare-fisted, all the while shouting for my wife, my helpmeet, to come and save the children. The bat flees the bedroom, nearly impaling me with it's wing-talons and I chase it down the stairs, glimpsing as I pass my wife in the office where she has opened the window, presumably to hurl herself out in terror. "NO!" I say, "I have it right where I want it! Save the children!" She complies.

11:12 PM: Silence. Downstairs, the darkness is deep. The beast hides, awaiting me, knowing I will come, sensing the courage in my heart, as one's nemesis always has a sixth sense about these things. I descend.

11:14 PM: I discover the beast in the kitchen, as I turn on the light it dives from the ceiling, belching out a great fountain of orange fire from its nostrils. I fall to the ground, several times, barely avoiding the scorching flames, razor-sharp talons, and poisonous jaws.

11:15 PM: I have an idea, and flee for the camera.

11:17 PM: Back in the kitchen, the winged demon is wreaking havoc, thawing out our meat with it's flaming breath and making unwanted toast. I attempt to flash blind it with the camera.

11:18 PM: My wife has come downstairs, and again I catch her at the front door trying to make good her escape. Again she has left our children to the fate of the bat. I command her upstairs.

11:24 PM: For several long minutes, the bat and I are locked in combat. We grapple as Jacob and the angel did, destroying furniture, shattering picture frames and making a terrible racket.

11:29 PM: Exhausted, I summon my last ounce of strength and hurl the bat away from me. I cast down my enemy and smite his ruin upon the chaise lounge. The frenzied beast drags its heaving bulk out the front door and again takes wing. I slam the door shut in time to see the creature swoop down and snatch a Siberian Husky from a neighbor's backyard. It soars away into the night, carrying its prey with it.

11:31 PM: All is well and peaceful.

As you can see, the truth is very different from the cute little tale you were earlier told. I may bear the bodily scars of the feral attack and the emotional scars of a wife who abandons us all in our time of need, but rest assured that I will still love her, and continue to protect her from the vile minions of darkness.

Things that go BUMP in the night

My baby girl was fussing around ten-thirty last evening. She never fusses at this time of the night. On this rare occasion I can say that I am absolutely thrilled that she kept me up. I can also say without pause that, for what it’s worth, I am glad my husband was home from his men’s group at church earlier than normal.

After I nursed her I was settling her back into her crib when I heard one of the cats pawing at the window blinds in the dark.

“Argh,” I thought as I tucked the blanket under the baby’s legs to keep her warm, “when will those dumb cats learn to leave the blinds alone!”

The cat must have gotten bored quickly because I heard him start to play with the piece of Styrofoam on the floor that my son had pilfered from the box belonging to the new microwave. I turned to leave the room and head back to my own when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a dark shape hovering near the window and heard the unmistakable sound of wings in flight. Turns out the cats were not in the room with me after all; the sounds I had heard were courtesy of another animal.

I groaned. “You have got to be kidding me! Seriously? A BAT?!”

And then I did what any good mother would do: I ducked. No, I did not gather my children together and haul them to safety; nor did I drape myself over their bodies to protect them from this horrible apparition. I ducked. Allow me to defend myself by stating two semi-obvious facts: I did not wish to wake them only to have them become frightened, and I did not believe them to be in any immediate peril because bats don’t tend to be aggressive creatures. Oh, and this one was, to my estimation, clearly not rabid.

I continued to crouch as the bat swooped and glided around the room looking for a stable place to land, all the while making those kissy/squeaky Styrofoam noises that bats make. I began to consider how I should go about the process of bat-removal. There was the distinct possibility that if I alerted my husband to the bat’s presence he would freak. (My husband would freak, not the bat.) I had visions in my head of my husband blindly running around in circles until he dashed into a wall and knocked himself out.

Trying to sound perfectly calm so as to engender calmness in my husband, I called out, “Honey, can you come here? There’s a bat in the kids’ bedroom.” I had to call several times before he dragged himself out of bed to walk down the hall. (I later asked him why it took so long for him to come to my aid. He replied that he believed me to be joking. ‘Cause, yeah, any mother would want to wake her sleeping children up so she could have an excuse to begin the ritual all over again by shouting about some imaginary bat).

He plodded to their doorway, looked over the gate and gazed stupidly at me. “What are you talking about?” he asked, with a look of concern that undeniably indicated that he thought I had gone mad at long last.

The bat took flight again, squelching my husband’s concern for my mental faculties while at the same time making his concern for his own well being much more imminent. He feels the same way about bats as he does about bugs. Cue the freak-out music, please.

It was then I decided that I could not remain in my hunkered position forever, so amid his shouts of “get the kids out of there!” and “save yourselves!” and the standard “what should I do, what should I do?” that I arose with my arms about my face and head and clambered over the safety gate into the hallway. Probably because things with wings always surround a light in the outside darkness, my first inclination was to start turning on lights in order to draw it away from my sleeping babies.

I quickly flipped the hall switch and the office light switch, illuminating half of the upstairs; then I opened the office window and lifted the screen. The bat darted out of their room all right, but it missed the office doorway and went down the stairs instead. It alighted on some blue ribbon from which hangs a framed photograph of our first portrait as a family of three.

Now that the creature seemed less of an immediate threat my husband started to bark orders. My son had woken up what with all of the shouting and shrieking, so I was commanded to stay with the children while my husband, brave soul that he is, dealt with the bat.

I found it impossible to remain upstairs. With the level of noise emanating up through the floor I was afraid that the bat had somehow discovered that it could arm-wrestle my husband to the floor: it sounded to me as though my fearless protector was shouting and thumping the equivalent of “uncle” in some strange and foreign tongue indicating that he needed urgent help. Either that or he was performing an Indian bat-ridding dance. Either way I didn’t want to miss it.

It must have been the latter because when I arrived on the scene my husband was not pinned to the floor. He must have forgotten one of the critical steps in his dance though, as the bat was still present- circling around and around the ceiling fan in the kitchen. Actually, what my husband was doing was taking pictures! And ducking. I don’t think the bat liked the flash very much.

Once again the fearless ridder-of-things-black-and-yucky commanded me to go upstairs and tend to the children. I made a quick detour to turn on the porch light and open the front door. There continued to be much shouting, stomping, and falling over while I waited with the babies for the battle of the wills to be over downstairs. Eventually my husband threw himself to the floor one last time (he claims the animal was attacking him), and the bat became tired of all the shouting and extricated himself from the house by means of the front door I had left open.

Needless to say, a number of books were read and songs sung before everyone was sufficiently tired enough to go back to sleep. The only injury sustained during the whole ordeal was a broken toenail that my husband acquired during one of his spectacular dives to the floor. Hopefully that blue throw rug I stuffed behind the attic door will prevent any other nighttime creatures from penetrating into our living space. Hopefully.