Thursday, July 23, 2009

That is no Moth…

At 2:30 am, it is sometimes hard to figure out what exactly a certain noise might be. For example, a soft swooshing moving around the room could be a breeze blowing the curtains or it could be someone skateboarding home on the next street over. A fluttering noise could be a bird outside the window or maybe a moth trying to get in or out of the window, blindly bashing into the glass, or it could be Zoe shaking my blankets trying to wake me up for some unknown reason. Sometimes sounds carry farther in the still of the night and I often can hear groups of people walking home from the bars as clear as a bell even though they are on the next street over. Or possibly they are breaking into my house and I am just too sleep-stupid to realize it:

Me: Oh how nice! a group of young people coming home from an evening out. I remember when I used to roll in at 4am too. Those were the days! Better snuggle back to sleep…

Group of young people: Hey pass me that safe. And did you get the snowboard? Don’t forget the bikes.

And so it was that on the night before last, I woke up to a strange rhythmical fluttering sound in my room that I could not, for the life of me, identify. Kent woke up too and got out of bed to use the washroom. I’ll just say here that at this juncture in the night he was starkers. Naked. As he stumbled to the bathroom, I woke up enough to start wondering what exactly that noise was. “Is there something flying around the room?” I said. "Naaa, it’s just a moth” said Kent. But the swooshing continued and something about this strange sound was becoming familiar at a subconscious level. Working its way into my mind was a word: ‘baa…’ ‘baaaaa’… “That is no Moth!” I finally screeched, letters and words falling into place in my mind. “That is a bat!” Kent flicked on the bathroom light, and confirmed my suspicions with a loud “Holy shit it IS a bat!”

I pulled back the covers only to yank them over my head again, shrieking as the bat swooped over my side of the bed, but not before I caught sight of Kent diving naked onto the couch in our room, clutching a pillow as a form of protection. For the next 10 minutes I cowered under the covers, getting hotter by the second as I dared not expose my head to what could only be the bloodthirsty jaws of the bat. Clearly it was a vampire bat and was obviously very thirsty and was planning on draining both of us of all our blood, leaving two limp pallid bodies in its wake. Or perhaps it was rabid and we would both die a vicious death, writhing around and foaming at the mouth as our families watched from behind protective glass.

At this point, the bat veered off its course of a figure 8 around the room and took off down the stairs. “It’s gone!” said Kent from the couch. “Open the windows and the skylight” I cried. “Umm I’m pretty sure they are open already and that’s why there’s a b…Here it comes again!” yelled Kent as we heard the beating of wings coming back up the stairs. “Get it into the bathroom. God It’s hot under here.” I said, desperate to be free of my sauna-like prison. “Why don’t you just come out?” asked Kent. “Because there’s a bat flying around the freakin’ room that’s why!” If you haven't seen my bedroom then you won’t know that it is a converted attic space and as such there is not a lot of well, head room, and so any flying-mammal that is caught in said bedroom will not have much space to itself.

However, at this point, the bat conveniently flew into the bathroom allowing Kent to shut the doors on it. If you haven’t seen my bathroom then you will also not know that these French ‘doors’ have no glass in them (long story don’t ask) and instead have two curtains draped over them in quite a fetching manner. Unless you are trying to trap a bat and then all of a suddenly the curtains seem useless and you find yourself looking with distress at the place where the glass isn’t hoping that the bat does not come screaming through the curtains and into your hair where it decided to build a nest. It’s amazing what you find yourself thinking at 3am.

Anyway, none of this happened and the bat spent another 15 minutes flying around the bathroom, presumably looking for a place to roost or whatever it is that bats do. It was fascinating and alarming both at the same time to watch the shadow of the bat as it was cast upon the white curtains. More than once I thought WTF! to myself. Why is there a bat in my bathroom at 3am and would it please go home!

After what seemed like several months, the bat finally stopped flying and seemed to have found a place to hang from its little bat feet. Of course the question was now ‘where exactly is the bat’?

What ensued over the next 4 or so minutes is, fortunately, captured on video. The camera just happened to be close at hand and so I thought it might be interesting for the kids in the morning to see evidence of our nocturnal adventure. So Kent suited up in clothes, gloves and a jacket with a hood, and moved into the bathroom to try and find the bat, armed only with a broom and, oddly, a plastic garbage can, and I turned on the camera. Nothing happened for about 3 minutes as we searched and searched for the bat. It seemed to have disappeared. We had moved everything out from its place and stacked it in front of one of the doors. (I don’t know why I did this either). So when, after 15 minutes, I finally left my post beside the door and ventured into the room to assist in Operation Bat Removal, I was certainly not expecting Kent to locate it quite so quickly. “There it is!” he yelled, pointing at the baseboard behind a trunk we use for storage. Had I actually looked at this point, I would have seen a rather sweet little brown bat, hunkered down, all wrapped up and clinging for dear life to the baseboard, clearly exhausted. I would have seen Stellaluna. But instead, I saw a huge rabid vampire bat heading straight for my neck. I made a noise that Kent says he has never heard anywhere before, ever, (you can hear this sound yourself on the video!) and then I turned and bolted through/over the pile of everything that was in front of the door and tried to make-it through the door itself, ripping down the curtain scraping my arm quite badly, and stubbing my toe in the process. I ended up in a heap on the other side of the door and in fit of hysterical laughter. It really is ridiculous.

I was of no further use but fortunately Kent still had his wits about him. The bat was of course caught by a method that we may try to patent involving a pile of towels, and a rubbermaid storage bin. It was duly deposited outside in its pile of towels which Kent then shook to free the poor little thing. It was quite lovely as it stretched its velvety wings, crawled off the towels, and flapped off into the night. We both retired to bed, watched the video of me falling over about 62 times, then finally fell asleep.

Suffice to say I am a little more wary of having the windows quite so wide open and there are now lots of sounds that are suspicious to me. I still have a scrape on my arm but I also have a new story, and it does not involve rabies or bloodsucking, but rather a little velvety bat who wandered into my life for an hour. Yeah, whatever, as cute as you are just don’t come back!

To see this ridiculous video, find me on facebook. for some reason I can’t upload it here. Probably because it is too ridiculous.

Until next time…

1 comment:

  1. You guys sound like you have a lot of fun in the bedroom. ;) This is much more interesting that my usual 2am wake-up sounds: cat hairball, or "Daddy, I'm scared. Can I crawl in with you?".

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