Bats in my belfry ...

Kind of funny but last night I was having the best, and most entertaining dream! In the dream I was doing all of this fun stuff that I used to do like high elevation hiking and desert camping, and some point in the dream I decided to take an intensive alpine hiking class which involved a lot of working out carrying heavy packs in steep terrain. Well I was in the class on the first day, meeting all of my classmates, and they had us line up to meet our instructors. So there we are suiting up, and meeting the instructors, and we start getting briefed on what we are going to be doing and how each instructor was responsible for teaching us different things, and I look up when this one instructor starts talking, and it was a dear friend from my past. I was like "no way!", and he looked at me and got pissed because I interrupted his spiel. He did not recognize me! And I was PISSED! Because he would not talk to me, so I got sick of it and walked up to him and took my finger and started poking and tickling his sides saying "GIVE IT UP FAT BOY! YOU KNOW WHO I AM!" (a joke from our past) and he started balling up and giggling like the Pillsbury Dough boy and then he finally recognized me. The rest of the dream we were laughing so hard at everything and drinking beer while hiking -- we were laughing so hard and so much so that i actually woke myself up laughing out loud. Then I lay there in the dark trying to figure out if I had laughed myself awake, or did I actually hear something loud in the house (don't you HATE that?).

I was laying there still enjoying the giggles from the dream when I heard the noises again. I tried to convince myself that I really was not hearing anything and proceeded to lay there with my hears turned on super sonic. You know how that is ... you lay there and are listening so hard that you can actually hear the blood flowing through your eardrums. I started getting SO SCARED because I KNEW I was hearing something in the house, but I could not figure out what it was. It was one of those instances that I knew (kind of knew) it was not a person, because our house is so creaky that you cannot weigh more than 10 pounds and not make our floors squeak -- but still, i kept hearing dragging, flapping, and slithering. I was paralyzed trying how to best get to the boys AND get out of the house ... I finally went back to sleep. I felt like an ass for the rest of the day because I was sure I was just being paranoid ...

Until 4:30 in the afternoon when I just happened to notice this on my curtains....

Yup. See that? It's a BAT!

I thought he was kind of cute, but I was a little wigged out at the same time because I had no idea how to catch him ...

I found myself laying mental reference upon one of the boys' Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes...

Bat, bat, come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon;
And when I bake,
I'll give you a cake,
If I am not mistaken.

This rhyme probably came from a time when more households dealt with bats in the house on more a daily basis (you know, fireplaces with no flue flappers, gaping siding, huge attics etc.). I guess the way they caught them was under a hat. But the logic ends there. Was I also supposed to wine and dine the thing? Yeah ... riiiiiiiight.

As I was formulating my plan of attack, all I kept picturing was me tippy toe on a chair, wearing my Bat-Catching-Accoutrement, sneaking stealthily up on the flappy critter, when all of a sudden it would be like the opening scene of Scooby Doo in here. There I go, falling on my head, bat skittering off to some dark recess of the house ... only to keep me awake for countless nights to come.

Long story short, I just walked up on the bat with an empty Tupperware container, and put it over him/her. It did not budge. The bat was really sleepy (like me). I gently laid the lid over the curtains in the container to impede escapiture (yes, my word).


I let the boys briefly ogle him through the sides of the container, and then I put his little fuzzy butt outside.

Little bat friend finally flew away once it got dark.
We think he was a Silver Haired Bat

Actually, that night, when I read the Bat Rhyme to the boys, I changed it to something that makes more sense in MY world ...

Bat, bat, come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon;
And if you get out,
You will flap about,
Of that, I am not mistaken.