I get a rather frantic call from my mom downstairs as I’m sitting in my room at the computer. Actually, I had just sat down after emptying my pockets and taking off my shoes since I had just come home from work – so a flash of irritation shot through me for a second – “what does she want now??” until I recognized the tone as being somewhat concerned. So I walk out into the hallway and get to the top of the stairs and I’m like “What? What’s the mat- Ah! Hey!” as an object whizzes by my head in the semi-darkness, as the hallway light isn’t on. So I follow it into my parents room, where the light is on, and see a bat circling around the ceiling fan. I quick think – ok, you have a moth trapped inside, what do you do? Well, in lieu of whacking it with a newspaper and making a smudge on something, most people tend to open a window or door and let it just fly out. So I go to one of the windows in the room nearest to the bat and push up the screen.
The bat flies out of the room.
Oookay, so I follow it again and it’s in my youngest sister’s room, who (thankfully, I suppose – even though she’s good with animals) is away at college. After turning up the lights to make sure it’s still flapping around in there, I think to shut the door this time before going to the window and pushing up the screen. And then I wait.
And wait.
Meanwhile as this thing is flapping around like crazy, my mom has the door cracked so she can speak to me, telling me my dad is getting a pool skimmer net and that I should use one my my sister’s tennis rackets to try and shoo the thing towards the window – because by now we had accepted that it wasn’t smart enough to fly out on it its own. Well, I didn’t want to hit the poor thing so my attempts at “shooing” were rather lame, and I gave up quick. My dad comes up with the pool skimmer and it’s just a surface one, no better than the racket. I tell him to go back and get the skimmer with the deep net while I, like anyone with nothing else to do other than to watch this bat flutter around the room, got my camera and took pictures.
These were the best of 40 pictures – I must admit that I managed to snap him somewhere in the frame in all 40 of them *finger clapping*
So my dad returns with the deep pool skimmer net, which he had to patch up a bit, and my futile attempts to corral the flying rodent resumed. I almost got it once, but it would usually just dive, dip, duck or dodge past the net. My next brilliant idea was to take my bedsheet and my dad and I stood on the bed and held it up when the bat was near the window, hoping to force it out or cover it under the sheet so we could bundle it up and release it outside. The tactic was partially successful, but before the whole cover could flutter down it would find a way out.
Finally it got tired and latched on to the top of the bedroom door, which was still open a crack so my mom could peek in. Of course, I had left the skimmer net outside when I went to go get my bedsheet, so when we tried to open it a bit more to get the net in – off he fluttered. *sigh*. A few minutes later though he hung himself up on the closet door – I suppose a splinter in the wood gave him purchase for his feet, whatever. We had the net this time and I slowly approached and placed the net over him – he didn’t move, must have really been tired from flying around so much. We put my bedsheet over the top and I took the net outside and shook him out.
So, happy ending to this story at least. We still have no idea how he got into the house in the first place, but at least he’s out again and hopefully happily eating bugs once more. You go bat – eat up those nasty bugs, cause I hate itching.
