Batty

My husband thinks there might be a bat in our wall air conditioner. This prospect is not a welcome one. Bats and I? We’re not friends.

We have had bats in our house before. It has been a few years though so I suppose we are due .

Are there “bat people,” you know, besides Batman? I mean people who like bats. Like “dog people” or “cat people.” If there are, I am not one of them.

The first time we had a bat in the house I was instantly in denial. I was lying on the sofa, watching TV, with a view into our kitchen. Craig, also on the sofa (ah, back in the days when we actually sat next to one another!) turned to me as we watched something fly across the doorway in the kitchen.

Me: Was that what I think it was? my pulse already racing.

Craig: Did you think it was a bat?

Me: eeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkk!

Craig was then all manly and chased the bat around the house with a blanket to try to capture it and take it outside. I cowered under a blanket and cried.

I slouched every time I walked into the kitchen for months for fear of another bat attack.

The second time we had a bat in the house, it entered the air conditioner. Craig noted its entrance and said he’d need to get it out of there. By this time M was born, but still an infant. Craig’s plan for evacuating the creature involved opening the air conditioner and letting it fly into the house where he would then capture it and return it to the great outdoors.

My involvement in the process went something like this:

I’ll be in the bedroom with M, and the door will be closed.

Then I sat in the bedroom and cried with my tiny daughter looking at me wondering who the crazy lady was and where her mom went.

I think my reaction matured a lot in the 2 or 3 years since that first incident.

I suspect if I’m sharing my home with one of the flying rodents again I’ll be crying under the covers again as well.


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