Fresh out of the shower, teeth brushed, and ready for bed.....
Caitlyn: "Dad, there's a bird in the house."
I was already upstairs tucking Candace in bed and I faintly hear Caitlyn say this to Paul.
Paul: "There's a bird in the house? ......... Oh honey, that's no bird..."
Meanwhile, I now register the full conversation JUST as the bat swoops over my head in the doorway of the bedroom.....
I DUCKED!!!!!!!! AND CROUCHED as low as I could to the ground!
Candace is registering that something is flying in the room and jumps out of the bed.....
Meanwhile, the bat has swooped back OUT of the bedroom, and I lose track of it. Heading to the stairs, Candace's hand in my own, Caitlyn at the foot of the stairs....
Me: "Girls, where is your butterfly net?"
Paul: {{in the background}} "That's too small."
{{a few moments pass......}}
Paul: {{entering with fishing net}} Where'd it go?
I had been scoping the ceilings in search of it (crouched low at the head of the stairs), fairly certain it had gone into Caitlyn's room.....and....
Bat: SWOOP.....it starts flying around in the high lofted ceiling.......
Me: "EEK!" {{crouching even lower, pointing...}} There it is!
Paul: {{net in ready-position}} ....SWOOOOOOOSH!
Paul saves the day by catching it in his first attempt.
NO, this is NOT my hand! Ewwww! And, NO, I did not have the camera handy, so this picture will have to do....it looked just about the same as this. About the same size......And as Paul started adjusting the net so the girls could see it, it started struggling to get free. THANKFULLY, it didn't, although the center of the fishing net has much bigger holes that it could have wiggled out, but Paul adjusted the net again.The SOUND it emitted......I had never heard a bat's sound before, and it was eeeeeerie!
10 minutes later and after questions of 'how did it get in the house?' from the girls: AMAZINGLY, we didn't hear a PEEP out of the girls once finally tucked into bed and some coaxing with kisses and hugs. Then again, it WAS late and we worked them late in the evening in the garden.
However, I ALSO am wondering how it got in the house. And......**gulp**......does it have a family?
13 comments:
YIKES!!! I now have the willies thanks to your bat story. Hate them!!
EWWWWWW!
They're protected here in UK, and if they take up residence in your loft you may not evict tem ! I like them outdoors, great to see on a warm evening in the garden ! But they are so very startling indoors !
My MIL actually had a bat house for a while. They are supposed to be very good at eating bugs. Still, not good to have them in the house -- yikes! Glad you were able to get it taken care of without TOO much fuss.
Several years ago we had a house with a pool. A bat swooped over the pool every night. He made a home at the top of our outside stairs, never came in the house, but seemed to divebomb us when we had nightly swims. He was very hard to get rid of. :-0
We had a bat in the attic last year. They will find any little space they can find and crawl in. Glad you caught it!
When my mother was alive and her mother too, she lived in an older home in Iowa. They had a bat and my father and a couple of macho uncles tried to get it, no luck. My probably at that time 80 year old grandmother came over and my mother told her about the bat. She got it with a broom. She had a rough upbringing, I should do her life in installments on my blog, and she was pretty fearless.
We used to have them often in our old house! Yuck! We had an awesome cat that we could call, lock in the same room, and she would have it in minutes! Sadly, she died and then we had to use a tennis racket. We left the tennis racket to the new owner when we built the new house!
Oh it looks so sweet (ugh!) I would have gone to the car till someone caught it - you are BRAVE!!
They are very soft and gentle creatures. We had one in our house a year or so ago. We were watching a movie, and throughout the entire movie I thought I kept seeing something fly in front of the screen. But I was realllly tired. Then after the movie was over my husband mentioned he must be tired, because he thought something kept flying in front of the screen, and at that moment, we both saw a flash of something dark as all the cats came flying into the room too. Then we knew there was something. It took us about 30 minutes to finally catch in it a towel as it flew back to its safety in the corner of the kitchen. We petted it and checked out the cute little guy, then set him back free outside. We figured it came in though the door one late night without us noticing, and was trying to figure out how to get back outside to its meal of flying insects.
I know a local person who got bit by one, and had to have rabies shots because of it. They had it tested, but the test doesn't come back until it would be too late to start the shots. His did test positive for rabies, so it was a good thing he had the shots! They may be good to have outside, where they eat insects, but not in the house where they are near people! His got in his tool belt, and when he stuck his hand to grab something, it bit him.
Hopefully you have had no other unwanted visitors!
Poor little thing, it must have been so frightened. As Suzan said, they're protected here - do you have bat regulations in the USA? And what did Paul do with it once he'd caught it?
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