Tuesday night: I lay down next to Stella to say good night. We heard a funny noise, something fluttering or skittering like a bird. Or a mouse. Or a bird-mouse. It was gone when we looked at the window. Maybe it was a really big moth, I thought to myself. "Mom," she said, "what's that high-pitched noise?" I couldn't hear it. "There it is again," she said. Dang, I thought, I must be getting old and decrepit if I can't hear a mosquito whining.
Wednesday night: I was toast. The first week of the semester is always busier than I think it ought to be, and yesterday I skipped out of a meeting early to race to piano, race to soccer, race back to piano, and then head over to soccer with Stella. After Pete was finished we went to a little Mexican joint for dinner, so I didn't have to deal with dinner or dishes. But I was still feeling weary when we walked in the door. "I will put on my pajamas and wash my face," I thought to myself. "Then I won't be tempted to stay up too late."
Stella got ready for bed quickly and I lay down next to her again. Flutter-skitter-flutter-skitter, said the window right next to us. That was not a moth, said the rodent-hating voice in my head. I sprang up and scooted the blind aside, shining my phone at the window.
Bird-mouse, it turns out, was a pretty good guess: there was a bat stuck between Stella's storm window and the interior pane. It was frantic, scrabbling wildly with its claws along the glass. "Okay, sweetheart," I said to Stella in my best impersonation of a calm person, "you need to go lie down in Joe's bed."
In the stories people tell about bats, they can squeeze through improbably small spaces. The windows in our house date from 1923, and -- what is the opposite of "tight as a drum"? is it loose as a muumuu? leaky as a colander or perhaps the Trump White House? -- whatever it is, that's what they are. I was worried that in its panic the bat would squeeze through the wrong tiny opening and wind up in Stella's room, in which circumstances I would lose my remaining ability to impersonate a calm person. I closed Stella's door and thumped downstairs.
"Hello," I said to the person answering the non-emergency police line, "I need some assistance dealing with a trapped bat." (In the moment I thought it had been stuck there since the Tuesday night flutter-skitter episode.) The animal control person called me back immediately, saying he'd head over as soon as he finished dealing with his current bat. He'd call me again when he was on the way.
Elwood was gone, did I mention? He was at games club with our 17yo, leaving me on my own to impersonate a calm person. I wanted him to come home IMMEDIATELY so that I did not have to face a bat or an animal control guy without another adult or even a bra. I also did not want to be a wimp. I thought, "I will just express a few thoughts about this on social media. And then when I know he's coming over I can put a bra on. And maybe some armor too. Anti-rabies armor."
Except, ha ha HAAA, the animal control guy apparently dispatched his other bat in record time. He did not call to say he was coming, and when the doorbell rang I was still in my pajamas, having failed to don either a bra or my anti-rabies armor. I suppose if your working hours are filled with potentially rabid bats you're unlikely to be alarmed by a pair of unholstered breasts, BUT STILL.
In Stella's room we discovered that our visitor had fled the premises. Once the light was off and the voices were gone, the bat got himself sorted out and squeezed back through the storm window. Mr. Animal Control assured me that he could not have squeezed into the room. Let us hope to heaven that he was correct and not merely Confunded by my extraordinarily vivid pajamas. It's bat season, he told us. They're very active. The bugs are drawn to the windows because they see the lights inside. The bats are chasing the bugs.
In the abstract I can appreciate that bats are part of a healthy ecosystem, and I can worry about the impact of white nose syndrome on insect populations. I have even posted about appreciating the beauty of bats before. But face to face? No. In my space? No. (Huh, that rhymes. Like Green Eggs and Ham, only the prospect of being fed a bat is causing me to flap my hands in horror.) I am still the same person who wrote this post about mice in 2004. I can be curious in the abstract about whether Stella's 8yo ears were picking up some of the bat's echolocation noises, which bottom out at 20kHz. I do not really want a definitive answer to that question.
So. I am going to go upstairs and see what I can figure out about the storm window. I know that bats are nocturnal and thus unlikely to come swooping in to tangle themselves in my hair while I work. I know that I can deal with the droppings that this one left behind, even if they give me the shudders. I know that my adrenaline hangover will fade. It will probably fade faster if I refrain from thinking about bats in my hair.
Off I go. I have no armor, but at least I have a bra.
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