It was a dark, hot night. The kind of night you have two fans going and still have to leave the porch door open with the screen latched. The wife and I had spent the last 24 hours in Portland attending the nuptials of her brother and his lovely bride, and all that frivolity had us wiped, so when we got home that evening, there was nothing on the agenda but some straight-up chilling, which in our house meant a couch, a couple adult libations, and a few episodes of the new Wet Hot American Summer series on Netflix. Part a reflection of our long day, part a reflection of our viewing choice, Cory was snoozing on the couch by 10, and a rerun of Tiny House Nation later I was about to board the same sleepy boat, so went to clean my teeth then stepped back in the living room to shut down the house.
That's when it happened.
I heard it first, an erratic ripple of the air in the room. I was by the front door, about to turn off the overhead light; Cory was still asleep on the couch; the cats were racing upstairs to the loft. I followed them with my drowsy eyes. And I saw it. Swooping and circling, spread-winged and squealing in panic. A bat. Condor-sized or so it seemed in the low light. I managed to say aloud, "Holy ____, is that a b-" and before I even knew she was awake, Cory was off the couch in full-on duck-and-cover mode, retreating from the living room and barricading herself in the bathroom before I could get out the "-at?" It's worth noting that most of the time when Cory takes a little night-nap on the couch, it takes a tad less than Megadeth cranked to 11 to wake her; the mere suggestion of a bat and she's like a Navy Seal, alert and enacting protocol at the first whiff of consciousness. End result? It was me and the bat. And two cats trying to test the efficacy of their rabies boosters.
The next few minutes were a blur. I did the only thing I could think to do: open the door. This diverted the cats' attention from a free meal to freedom, and it was they who bolted for the door, the bat still making its manic circuit above the living room. So the door got shut again and the cats returned their efforts to the bat, chasing it into rafters the loft and out of sight.
Seemed I wasn't going to be sleeping, after all. Cats and wife were relocated to the bedroom and I armed myself with the go-to in-house pest-removal tool, a broom. I had no intention of hurting the little guy - they're all over the place out here, and he obviously got in when Harrison, our elder feline, came in from the porch a little while earlier - but I had every doggone intention of going to sleep that night in a bat-free domicile. But then, there's a saying about best-laid plans...
At 2 a.m. I threw in the towel. I'd beat on every rafter beam with the broom handle and had only scared it out of hiding once, at which point I'd shrieked, dropped to the floor and completely blew any opportunity of directing the bat towards the door. I saw it fly into the highest point of the house, where several beams intersect, and despite beating on that to the point I broke the plastic ring connecting broom to handle, I never saw nor heard the bat again. I went to bed dead on my feet and vanquished in my own home. All that night my dreams were tormented by dive-bombing bloodsuckers frothing with rabies. The worst dreams were the ones in which I managed to capture and banish the bat; I'd wake relieved, but only for a blissful handful of seconds before the harsh, fear-inspiring reality of the situation reacquainted itself with my memory. Morning came. And with it our mission.
That day was like the third act of The Lost Boys as I thought of it, the third act of Home Alone as Cory conceived it (which I think accurately relates the fundamental difference in our characters; I've never denied I married out of my league): we had the daylight hours to prepare ourselves, hatch a plan and set it in motion, because as soon as the sun set and darkness once again spread its cold blanket over the house, our foe would come out of hiding, more panicked and desperate than before, and our struggle would begin again. Our plan was simple: darken the house, open the front door and turn on the porch light. The hope was that air current and illumination would attract it and away he'd fly. As a precaution, I had a Thor t-shirt tied through the broom handle and a bucket, heavy gloves, safety goggles, and a backwards Mariner's cap. I'm not trying to get all the rabies.
So we waited, watching the sun slip ever closer to the horizon, dragging the light out of the sky and casting the ceiling beams in increasing shadows. Sunset was scheduled for 8:55. At 8:30 we turned off all the lights. As the division of labor went, when the bat showed itself, I would open the front door, flip on the porch light and try to direct the bat that way, and Cory would run for the bathroom and wait for it all to be over. Marriage is a partnership.
8:55 came. The tension in the air was thick and the potential energy was crackling in our veins. Every sound made us jump, every creak and crack and scratch or rattle was a beginning, and bold and certain as we'd been all day, in a dark house with only a t-shirt on a stick between us and a virus just a notch or two down from Ebola, it started to occur to us we might be in over our heads. But we had followed the bat across the Rubicon, there was no turning back. Bottom line, there wasn't room enough in our house for us, two cats and bat; somebody had to go.
8:55 turned to 9 turned to 9:15, 9:30, 9:45, and still no sight or sound of our winged tormentor. It was like the thing was toying with us, just sitting up there reveling in our paranoia. I dared an excursion into the loft for another round of beam-striking, convinced (somewhat) that this time I would remain calm and collected when the bat escaped it's hidey hole.
But there was no bat to be brave in the face of.
At 10 we turned on a lamp in the living room. Ten minutes later we dared to sit on the couch again, my shirt-broom still in-hand and our eyes affixed to the ceiling. Twenty minutes after that we turned on the TV, still keeping the volume low in case there was something else to hear. But there never was. We went to sleep that night confused, still nervous, and at a complete loss for what to do next.
The next day I did some research. Turns out there's no Animal Control services out here in Lyle, you either deal with problems the old fashioned way - yourself - or you call the sheriff. We were not going to be calling the sheriff over a single bat, thus labeling ourselves as helpless city slickers for our tenure out here. So instead I called the health department. After politely chuckling at my harrowing description of events, the very nice director asked if I'd lived out here long, to which I could only reply, "Apparently not long enough." He went on to explain how only 6% of bats tested in our county over the last decade tested positive for rabies, and most of the time it's our own imagination and preconceived notions that make the experience of finding a bat inside so tumultuous. In reality, they're scared and hungry, very tiny non-aggressive things, barely different than having a bird in your house. They do not want to bite you. They do not want to infect you and your loved ones with a heinous disease. They do not want to turn you into a vampire. All they want is out. To that point, they're also very pliable animals, able to compress themselves through holes and cracks no bigger than a dime. So bottom line, if we didn't see the bat that second night, it's because the bat wasn't there to be seen. Now, does that mean there's some kind of minuscule opening in one of our ceiling beams? Yep, but between the beams and the outside world are the metal sheets of our roof, so it's not like moisture can get in, only bats, which the health department director assured me - in response to my shrill, panicked question - that they have no interest in doing, there's nothing inside for them but terror, starvation, and possible consumption-by-cat. So long story short - we totally overreacted. Opening the door most likely would have worked if the cats hadn't thwarted it, and my Rambo-esque montage of preparation - themed to "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins, natch - was completely unnecessary, as was our fear.
So then the moral here, if even there is one, is don't let the bats in your house go to your belfry. And seal your roof.
