Last night, as dusk became dark, and the sun slipped away in the quiet evening air, a bat started flying around in my house. Inside. It was flying around inside the house is what I mean.
I’m not sure if I’m explaining this accurately. An actual live bat was flying around like you sometimes see them outside only it was inside. My house.
I can’t fully describe the terror one feels as a bat swoops around your kitchen and your living room and your head and your cat. Will it fly into your hair? Land on your cat? How will you get it out?
No, really. How can I get it out? Will I be up all night trying to get the bat out? Can one even get a bat out of a house? Or does it the bat live in your house forever and you just have to move? (“What’s that?” You say to a prospective buyer. “A bat? No, that’s just a ghost! Super friendly!”)
I hadn’t really eaten all day and was working late. Finally, I stood in the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator. I have so much food, but what do I have that takes 3 minutes to cook at 9pm?
Mostly, I only had vegan hot dogs and potato chips. As I closed the refrigerator, hot dogs in hand, I noticed something from the corner of my eye. A bat. A bat is what I noticed. Flying around my kitchen.
I think of myself as someone who is good under pressure, who can think on my feet, but it brings me no pleasure to tell you that my very first response was to quickly turn off all the lights inside, turn on lights outside, and open the back door.
The bat did not turn into a moth and fly towards the light.
Instead it swooped out of the kitchen and into the living room. Then down the hall. An open concept house full of air and light is all fine and good but no one warns you that you’re setting yourself up for a bat to hide out wherever it wants.
I spent some amount of time running away from the bat and screeching. This didn’t seem to help.
I opened the front door then ran inside to grab the cat and locked her in the guest room. Was the bat already hiding out in the guest room and I was only locking the cat up with the bat? Maybe!
I then closed the door to my bedroom. I reasoned that if I couldn’t get the bat out, I could still lock myself in my room and possibly sleep, although also, maybe the bat was already hiding out in there, snuggled in a curtain, waiting to fly out at me when I closed my eyes.
When I got back to the living room, the bat was gone. Or locked in one of the bedrooms. Or possibly looking at me from a secret hiding spot in a curtain or a plant or the chimney.
Did the bat fly out the front door? No way to know! It wasn’t flying around erratically around my head anymore, so that was a good sign. But also maybe it was under my bed or in a ceiling fan.
I turned on every light in the house and slowly crept around, all of my blood replaced with ice water, circulating around inside my body.
I tentatively checked behind curtains and in plants and under tables while my cat yelled loudly from behind the bedroom door. I checked on her. No obvious bats.
I decided against dinner. I let the cat out of the bedroom/possible bat hiding room.
I went to bed and turned off the light. And immediately turned it back on again. Would the bat started flying around my head in the dark? Probably.
After several hours of not sleeping, scary dark turned to lighter, scarier early morning and my ice water-filled body woke up. I tiptoed around the house and didn’t find any bats but I’m now on high alert. Could it still be hiding in the house? Sure. Could it get in again from however it got in before? Definitely! Several bats sleep in our patio umbrella when they’re not flying around in the kitchen. We gave up the idea of using the umbrella. Maybe we have to give up the kitchen too?
I know dusk is coming again. Later today even. Can I move before that? Probably I can’t, what with the pandemic and everything.
So it’s me, the cat, my anxiety, and the bat. Who hopefully is outside and not sleeping under my bed right now.