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bat outa hell!
A conversation I had with Patrick the other day (warning: kind of looooong):
L: I had a Suzanne moment of Suzanne-ness last night!
P: Oh?
L: So I leave my nice air conditioned room to go to the basement and move some laundry from the washer into the dryer. I pop on the light in the kitchen along the way and...
L: ...wait for it....
P: .........................
L: ...there was a BAT in the kitchen!
P: A BAT?!?!?!!
L: A bat!
P: AAAAAAAHHHHH!
P: Flying rodents!
L: All three cats are enthralled
L: staring at it, fascinated
P: Sam's dreams just came true.
L: I'm all, "you guys are a big help!"
P: They're all, "You don't pay us for this shit."
P: So what'd you do?
L: Well!
L: I walked into mom's room
L: said "I have some bad news"
L: "There's a BAT in the KITCHEN!"
P: BAHAHA!
L: She LEAPS out of bed!
L: says AAAAAAAHH!
P: Which is appropriate.
L: So we flutter around, panicked, for a while
L: as does the bat
P: BAHAHA
L: The cats, of course, are NOT panicked
P: "Thing flying!" "Feed us."
L: So we think, we'll open the kitchen door and turn on the outside light and maybe it will flee all on its own. But there are three damned cats who would LOVE to go outside and ignore the bat entirely in favor of nocturnal pursuits. So I have to GO INTO THE KITCHEN to CATCH the CATS!
L: little bastards
P: Hee
L: Grey of course was the easiest to corral, she was closest to me. Put her in my room, no problem. Then Harry I catch by his tail (I am hunched over, of course, so the bat doesn't fly into my head!) and throw him at mom. We stick him in my room, too. Finally I stand in the doorway and say "Sam, come here!" because he's under the table and the bat is in the kitchen window and that's just TOOO CLOSE! And...
L: ...he actually comes!
L: So the cats are safely locked in my room. Now comes the doorway
P: Scooting along the outer walls, are you?
L: ...but the bat decides now is a great time to go into the living room!
L: SHRIEK!
P: Oh, god. You should have videotaped it.
L: I KNOW! it would have been hilarious.
L: So I think of the bright idea of thumb-tacking sheets up over the doorways, and closing the pocket doors into the computer room. Much merriment ensues, during which time the bat flies back into the kitchen. Yay! So the doorways are sheet-covered, and Mom and I are in the hallway peeking thru the sheet at the still-fluttering bat.
P: You're killing me here.
L: I pop off the light in the kitchen, run thru the kitchen, head down, and make it to the door, thru the door, and outside. I prop open the screen door, and realize that I really need to have light to see if the bat leaves. I jump around in front of the motion-sensor on the garage, but it's not really enough
P: Stop! I'm gonna pee!
P: Too funny.
L: So mom finds a flashlight and I run the gauntlet again, thru the bat-infested kitchen..
L: got the flashlight...
L: got out on the porch again (where, oddly, I feel safe)
L: (like there are no bats OUTSIDE)
L: and I shine the flashlight thru the windows....
L: ...and notice at the very top of one of the windows there's a one-inch GAP, and there's a little furry BAT HEAD sticking out, sorta looking at me
P: Gah!!!
L: it twitches its wee ears, and then pops back IN
L: which means back into the kitchen...
P: Oh, lord.
L: bravely I pull the storm window down from the outside, so if it sticks its head there again it will be completely free
P: Does this end with you taking out a wall?
L: thinking "Ew! ew! ew!! It could climb down and ... ew!"
L: then the flashlight dies....
P: HA!
L: …but mom had thoughtfully given me TWO flashlights
L: so I turned on the other one, and damned if the little furry head wasn't BACK!
P: "Hello there!"
L: so I turned OFF the flashlight, scurried back inside, and shut the door on the way. Bastard has a way out, and I'm not letting anything else IN, that’s for damned sure.
L: But of course he doesn't go
P: He likes it inside!
L: He just sits there, twitching
L: fluttering a little
L: being a pain in the ass.
L: I send mom to bed, saying I can watch until he leaves
P: I'm sure she felt safe.
L: we were both laughing and feeling a little freaked, but she had to get up early for PT, and it was already 12:30 or so
L: So she went, and I sat there, watching his little head
L: I got bored about two minutes in, so I went and looked up GET BAT OUT HOUSE on Google
P: BAHA!
L: And learned that bats are not blind, and you should turn on lights, and they'll probably leave on their own if you make it obvious how to get out.
L: I return to the kitchen, filled with resolve
L: turn on the flashlight (the light was already on)
L: and he was gone!
L: Or so I thought
L: I call mom and tell her, and she comes out to inspect.
L: She won't actually come into the kitchen, mind you, but she stands in the door behind the sheet and watches me as I pull up the curtains, etc.
P: She's brave.
L: So I pull up the curtains and what do I see right outside the window?
L: The bat, still sort of hanging around
L: but at least now on the proper side of the glass.
P: CLOSE THE WINDOW!!
L: I would, but his little feet were still there
P: TICKLE HIS LITTLE FEET!
L: Plus I'd have to get really close to him to do that, and THAT'S just not happening. So I shine the flashlight on his furry little face and finally, finally, finally he flies away.
P: Whew!
L: I leap on a chair (yes, LEAP) and push the window shut
L: but it won't stay shut because our landlord broke it
L: so we stuff dishtowels in the gap and solve it the girl way.
P: Oh, man. That's too funny.
L: The End.
L: ....or is it?
P: squeeeeeeek......
L: The cats were pissed, looked for the bat when I let 'em out
P: "Hey! No toy!”
L: It was kind of funny. I said to mom, "hey, we managed to handle this on our own, and pretty easily too, so be glad!"
P: Yeah, you'll be on Animal Cops: Malden soon.
L: Yeah, I can just see it. Me and Investigator Debbie MacDonald, forcing our big butts into crawl-spaces and eaves and things.
L: When I told Suzanne my tale she said, “I would have begun it: ‘You know, it’s always handy to have extra dishcloths on hand in the kitchen.’”
P: BAHAHAHA!
L: She’s really a genius.
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I've had all kinds of helpful solutions offered to me since that night. Thanks ever so! Where were y'all when I needed you? But thanks...
And hey -- Happy Belated Birthday, co-birthdate person!
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The wife and kids were in Maine when this happened, so there was a fair bit of me dithering in a semi-panic in there too. The bat started out in the dining room, where there are no doors, but it flew upstairs into the bedroom before I even began to have an idea how to handle it.
Oh, and I didn't mention what happens if you don't reinforce the paper bag with cardboard: the top of the bag collapses enough to let the bat out. A cardboard box would've worked better, but I didn't have one to hand in the bedroom and I didn't dare open the door for fear the cats would get in.
So what kind of useful suggestions did you get from other folks? Anything I can use next time?
OTOH, I like having bats around outside. When we lived in Chelmsford we used to sit on the deck and watch them fly around and eat the mosquitoes. It's just in the house that they bother me.
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Most of the suggestions involved cardboard boxes and opening windows and suchlike. The flashlight I found particularly useful. No one had anything failsafe -- I was hoping for a solution like "next time, have a cowbell handy. Stand on one foot outside the house, ring the cowbell, yell "Shazam!" and you'll be guaranteed to be bat-free."
Why aren't there solutions like that?! I would like a solution! I need to live in the Harry Potterverse, clearly.
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I've been imagining the distant future where "wild" animals have been genetically engineered to respond in a predictable manner to human inputs, so the bat will fly towards the open window when you say "Go Away" to it. Maybe someday it could be done, so some time after that it will be. . .