The Bat Story

I'm finally able to tell the story of the bat attack last week. Granted, I'm doing this in the afternoon and I may still shudder a bit, but at least I can put it into words :)

Last Tuesday night, I put the kids to bed and came downstairs to do some stamping. I was actually awake and ready to work on Christmas cards for a nursing home ministry and work on my classes coming up this week. Part way through cutting some of the pieces to the cards, I heard a strange noise. I went into the living room and turned off the fan and listened. It sounded like scratching on the inside of our tin ceiling. The more I listened, the more I realized that something was up in the ceiling!! I didn't see any way for it to get out and we have heard mice in the walls in the past, so I just figured the thing got a little higher up. And then I saw something start to creep out of the decorative thingy in the center of the ceiling.

I screamed and the whatever-it-was went right back into the ceiling. It did look like a bat, but I didn't really get a good look at it. I then proceeded to wander around the house in a panic and talk to myself. Seriously, what do you do in this situation? Normally, I would have barricaded myself in my bedroom and let Rob deal with it. But he was at work, so it was up to me to take care of It. I tried calling the landlord, but he wasn't home. I went over to our neighbor on the other half of the house, but he wasn't home. While I was outside, I noticed that every single light in the neighborhood was off. I then proceeded to wander around and mutter some more. Then our neighbor came home, so I rushed outside and asked him what to do. He thought it could be a raccoon (fabulous) or a bat (ugh) and just wished me luck. THANK ALOT!!!

I figured at this point the only thing that might keep me sane was going upstairs with the phone, wait for Rob to call, and then BEG him to come home. I folded laundry to keep my mind off the creature in my ceiling, periodically banged on the floor upstairs to keep it away, and played N64. Time went by VERY SLOWLY while I waited for a phone call. When Rob did finally call, I told him right off what was going on. His supervisor very graciously allowed him to come home. He didn't hear anything, but he did call the police to see if there was an animal control service we could call. There wasn't. So Rob stayed downstairs with the lights off to see if he could find it while I went to bed.

Little did we know that the bat (and it turned out to be) had already left the ceiling. More than likely, it happened before Rob came home. We found this out when I woke up at 12:15 am to a bat flapping around my bedroom! I screamed and jumped out of bed, covering my head and back with a pillow as I cowered near the bed. Rob shot upstairs and flipped on the light, which made the bat settle down and perch on a decorative thing. Rob told me to stay put and I said, "Okay." He then changed his mind and asked me to slowly leave the room. I said, "Okay," and didn't move. I was paralyzed with fright. Rob had to pull me off the floor and out of the room. He asked if I wanted to go downstairs, but I really didn't want to find out if the bat had any friends. I crawled into bed with Ben and the boys (who had awakened to my screaming) and I kept tabs on Rob as he proceeded to catch the bat over the next two hours.

The first thing Rob did was go online to find out what to do. He got a heavy coat, hat, and gloves on and went upstairs with a broom, blanket, and bucket. He pulled the air conditioner out of the window in hopes that it would just fly out. He said he spent a lot of time just staring at the thing wishing someone else would do this for him :) But he was very brave and kept working at getting the bat down and out. He kept getting screeched at and was afraid of being attacked, so he took a few breaks to let it calm down. It flew to our window then the bottom of the bedframe before finally flying under the bed and getting itself caught in a bag. Rob tried to shake it out of the bag and out the window, but it was caught. Finally, he threw the whole bag onto the roof and let the bat fend for itself.

For a few days after that, I would jump at the least little noise. I'm still a little hesitant at night and Matthew spent three days sleeping with me until Rob came home. Our landlord did seal the thing the bat was hiding in better and showed us where we had some huge gaps in our windows that needed to be sealed up as well. Thankfully, bats around here are pretty solitary so that should have been it, but my extra-sensitive sense of hearing keeps telling me otherwise at night. UGH!! I'm sure I'm supposed to learn some lesson from all of this, but I'll have to stop freaking out at night first :)