When Freya got me up to go outside this morning at 4, a BAT was flying laps around my kitchen.
All the bat stories my friends tell involve: 1. a husband chasing the bat while they hide under the covers, 2. a tennis racket--Neither of which I have at my disposal. Tennis racket is in the garage, and I don't want to risk this bat flying off to hide in some cranny upstairs. I don't want to let him out of my sight, so my tennis racket is not an option.
So, first I buck up--nobody else is gonna get this sucker so I gotta do it--I put on my hat (in case the wives' tales about bats getting in your hair is really true), and look for something with which to swat him out of orbit! Used the last newspaper to light the grill last night...wait...a RUG! I swoop up a rug, time his lap just right and wham! I knock him to the kitchen floor. Quick, before he flaps up again, I pick him up in the rug and hustle outside.
Over the raspberry bushes, where the bat body can decompose, I give the rug a shake. No bat. I shake harder. No bat. What? He's stuck to the rug. I'm NOT pulling him off. After all this, I'm not touching him. Is he dead? No, he's hanging on for dear life. I can't shake him loose.
So I hang the rug over a rung of the windmill and let him be. Freya looks at the rug and wonders if she needs to bark at this apparition in the dark. (Why didn't she see the damn bat? She was too busy on her way outside to do her business! And I wouldn't want her chasing it or barking at it in the house anyway).
He was there the whole time Freya was outside, but this morning, he was gone.
Good little bat. Stay OUTSIDE where you belong and eat mosquitoes.
Ah, the price I pay for a farmhouse getaway of my own. Know what? It's worth it.
And it makes a good story.
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