Holy Freak-out, Batman!

I was going to give you a quick write-up about my time in Chicago, but something happened last night that took precedent over the entire weekend.

Arriving home from Chicago, I had just enough time to shove some food in my mouth and run a brush through my hair before heading out to rehearsal. After rehearsal, I came home, exchanged some pleasantries with Gary (who retired to his bedroom), and flopped down on the couch. All I wanted to do was unwind a bit and watch the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. (which, WOW, btw). The kitties were all over me, curled up for some quality time after my weekend away. Things were good, Starbuck was tapping out the secrets of the universe, and I was chilling out.

Suddenly, Galahad perked up and dashed into the hall, to be quickly followed by Dill and Kayla. I didn’t think too much of it – I assumed there was a bug of some sort. We get a lot of moths this time of year and the cats enjoy chasing them around. I was also, frankly, pretty focused on the show. And then something dark in the hall flitted into my peripheral vision and disappeared again. Wow, I thought. That must be a pretty big moth. It happened a couple more times and just when I was starting to get suspicious of it, this flew into the room:



As I was lying on the couch, it flew directly over my head. It was a terrifying moment wherein I envisioned the bat swooping down and eating my face. So I did the only thing I could do: I bolted upstairs, screaming for Gary the entire way and praying the bat wouldn’t follow me.

Here’s the thing: I am a brave, liberated chic. I will kill my own bugs – spiders, beetles, those creepy-ass centipedes we get, even roaches (which I despise) – I can do it. I’m not particularly fond of wild mice or rats, but once faced with them, I can steal myself and take care of business.

But bats? No. Just…no. For one thing, they carry a lot of disease. Like, a LOT. Rabies, first of all. But also SARS and the ebola virus. Second, they fly. Adding wings to a rat changes the entire equation. Since it can fly by it’s own volition, has sharp teeth and claws, and can give me deadly viruses? It has an advantage over me.

And you know what else? I don’t need that bullshit in my life. I’ve got enough problems as it is without disease-carrying winged creatures in my house.

Frankly, when faced with a bat in my living room, I turn into Martha Plimpton in The Goonies:


Rabies! Rabies!

So I have never been so glad that I live with a man than I was last night. I hurled myself into Gary’s room without even bothering to knock, and demanded he put his XY chromosome to good use.

Gary: [getting up, looking panicked] What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!
Me: There is [pant] A BAT IN THE LIVING ROOM. You need to take care of this.
Gary: That’s all? A bat?
Me: Whatta you mean, “That’s all?” What else do you want?
Gary: [chuckling] It’s just a bat.
Me: EXACTLY. GO GET RID OF IT. I can’t handle this.
Gary: What would you have done if I wasn’t home?
Me: I would have left. Abandoned the house and the cats and just left. Once a safe distance from the house I would then call the landlord and have him take care of it.
Gary: You know that bats are all around here, right? Like, they live in that tree right next door.
Me: I know, I’ve seen them, and that’s fine. They can live out there. They belong out there. But they do not belong in my living room, so get it out right now I'mnotkiddingsohelpmegodthisismyseriousface.

Gary chuckled his way downstairs and went searching for the bat. But he was unable to find it. “Come down and show me where it is,” he called up to me. By the mirth in his voice, I could tell he thought I had made the incident up. I creeped downstairs to help.

As we were driving to the fair a few weeks ago, Mike recounted how he recently was sent on an EMS call to our old apartment in Ardmore. Which, if you remember, we sort of loved, but was a dump. The reason for the call: The girl now living in Kelly’s old room had a cockroach crawl into her ear while she was sleeping. We did not have roaches while we lived there but if we had I would have picked up and moved, let me just tell you. At the time, I told Mike that I couldn’t imagine anything worse happening to you while you sleep. But I was wrong. Because as I was creeping down the stairs I remembered hearing on NPR that bats can bite you while you sleep and you will never know. You wake up with rabies, surprise!

I was also remembering a story QK told me about her mom – that a bat got in the house, and they thought they had got it out, but instead it hid, of all places, in their bed, burrowed under the covers. QK’s mom didn’t realize until she crawled into bed and was – I swear to god – lying on top of it.

There was no way in hell I was having either of those things happen to me. So I went downstairs to help Gary locate it.

“Where is it, where is it?” he kept asking me. “I don’t know where it is now,” I told him. “It was flying around the living room the last time I saw it.” And a few seconds later, it flew back in, causing me to haul ass back upstairs to the sounds of Gary’s laughter.

Gary managed to apprehend the bat within a few minutes, and release it safely into the wild. I am now freaked about how the bat got into our apartment in the first place. Best as I can figure, it squeezed in through one of the small openings between the panes of our old windows. Considering I’ve lived for 4 years in this apartment and never had a bat enter before, I’m going to consider this a freak occurrence. Either that, or the vibe of QK moving in is drawing the bats near. Not only does her mom have that bat story, but QK has a few of her own, as well.

Gary had made so much fun of me for this whole incident, but I don’t care. I feel very rational in my dislike of bats in my personal living space. And considering he did the dirty work and captured the bat, he has free reign to do so.