Bats

I've always thought bats were amazing creatures. 

While living in Michigan, I had quite a bit of experience with bats.  Since they don't really scare me, I was called upon to rid my friends' homes of them more that once, and usually in the middle of the night.  Remind me to tell you the hysterical story sometime of the bat that was in my friend Julie's house.  That bat became an occupant of my freezer (yes, it was in a glass jar).  Being the teacher that I am, I wanted to take it to school to teach my kindergarteners about bats and let them take a close look at one.  Unfortunately for me, my boss at the time was more hesitant to allow one of those vile creatures into the school, frozen or not, so it eventually made it into the garbage instead.  I could go into all the reasons that I think bats are cool, but now isn't the time.

Jim was TERRIFIED of bats.  Our backyard was a place they liked to fly around at night.  I noticed this right away when I would take the dogs out for their last potty break before bedtime, but I somehow *neglected* to mention this to him.  Well, he comes stomping in the house one night, indignant, and demands of me, "Did you know there are bats flying around our yard?!?".  I told a white lie when I responded with, "Really?  I never noticed.".

One night I was outside with the dogs, two very curious Jack Russell Terriers, when I noticed that they were circling around something in the yard, hopping and darting like they did when they got excited.  Since they were ignoring my calls to come inside, I went to investigate.  When I got over there, I saw that they were hopping around a bat that was flailing around on the ground.  The tricky part was that there had been several reports of rabid bats in our county.  So I quickly escorted them back into the house and went back outside to take a better look.  I was fascinated by the fact that the bat was just flopping around, since this seemed to be atypical behavior.  I clicked my flashlight on and then I discovered that bats can hiss.  This was one ticked off little fellow.  I had to get it out of the yard, just in case it was rabid, but I knew I'd need help from my sissy brave husband.  So I went inside and called him out to "help me with something".   He was curious, so he came with little convincing.  Until he saw the hissing, flopping creature in the backyard. 

I've never seen a man run back into a garage so fast, and I can't repeat the words that came flying out of his mouth!

 

I had to go over the entire capture strategy with him more than once before he agreed to slide something under the box I was going to put over it.  He put on thick work gloves, I grabbed a shoe box, and out we went.  He got a little frustrated with me because I would break out in fits of laughter every time he jumped backwards when it hissed.  After getting said creature into said box (and nearly wetting my pants), he made me hold the box while he wrapped the box completely in duct tape.  He wanted to run over it several times with the Jeep, but I reassured him that even Houdini couldn't get out of that box and I needed to see if animal control wanted it for testing.  We settled on leaving it out in the front yard. 

End of story, I thought.

A full three hours later I was lying in bed, peacefully sleeping, when I was awakend by RRRIIIIIPPPPPP...RRRRRIIIIIPPPPPP.  It's a sound you know withouth even looking- duct tape.   My first thought was that someone was downstairs tying my husband up, where did he put the gun, and is it loaded?  Then I became aware that there was no sound of a scufflle, so it must be Jim.  But what in the world was he doing???  *Sigh*  Downstairs I went to find him duct taping the kitty door that went to our basement completely closed off with duct tape.  We don't have a cat.  I asked him what the *beep* he was doing in the middle of the night with duct tape.  He looked at me like I was the idiot and replied...

"I'm making sure no bats come up out of the basement." 

Of course you were, dear.  Because that's were all bats come from.