I probably could have shit my pants if it hadn't been for the fact I was already sitting on the toilet when I happened to look up toward the top of the cupboard and the seen the biggest leg of a bat I'd ever seen in my life protruding out from behind the cap of a bottle of mouthwash. My first inclination was to scream at the top of my lungs for my son who'd already gone to bed but than I didn't want to freak out my tenants next door either. So I slowly raised up from the toilet and made my way towards the bathroom door keeping an ever cautious eye on that bat. As I near the door I am literally stunned at its size as it's body compared to any bat I've ever seen was enormous. I seen a brown strip starting to appear from behind where he was perched and I instantly thought it was brown bat. Noooo I am thinking, not one of those bats!!!
Back when my kids were just toddlers I was standing in the door way of their room. They said they thought they had seen a bat. I am standing in the doorway and I am telling them there's no bats in the house. I said if there was bats in the house believe me I wouldn't be standing here...and all of a sudden their eyes popped about as wide open as they could get as I continued on telling you there's no bats are in the house. If I thought we had bats... That alarmed looked on their faces didn't disappear which was fixated on something in the hallway. I turned my head to look and it was a huge bat coming straight down the hallway at me. Than I said to them as I screamed I'd be in this bed with you as I dove for the bed and hid under the covers with them. First time in my life experiencing any bats. I realized we couldn't just lay under the covers and scream all night so I told them to stay covered up while I grabbed a cover off the other bed, threw it over myself and crawled down the hallway, down the steps to and outside to get help. My neighbor had heard us screaming as he was out on his porch. He came over and got the bat to go outside by blocking it's sonar. He'd no sooner left and we were upstairs that the bat came back. I crawled back down the hallway to let my neighbor back in as he didn't even make it home before we were screaming again. This time he told us he'd have to kill it because it obviously had found a way in easily and would just keep coming back. So I wasn't to happy seeing this was possibly a brown bat. They are, from what my neighbor educated us on, were a larger bat family. To this day I've had a few bats over the years and nothing in comparison to the size of that bat that night.
I actually, because I've had a few over the years as mentioned, have a bat board. It sits at the top of the basement steps, it's what they call a boogie swim board made of Styrofoam. I am not as scared of them as I use to be, well, yeah I am scared of them but someone's got to have a grip on the situation. I still take the deep dive when I see them, crawl to find something to put over my head while I get the bat board. My neighbor had spent some time explaining how to block their sonar to get them into a room you can open a window to let them out or a door. He was a bat enthusiast so to speak detailing how he'd made bat boxes and put them up in the tree that sits between his house and ours. He liked to attract bats because they eat mosquitos. Over the years, long after he's done gone from next door, I look up at those bat houses every time I get a bat inside and think about how that probably attracts them inside more so than dwelling outside, especially before winter as they look for warmer place to hibernate.
Still though when I do have to kill one it usually entails standing off to the side and waiting for it to come flying through while holding the bat board over my head up into the air and coming down upon it when it passes knocking it cold to the ground. With those eyes that aren't really eye eyes looking up at you having to beat it near to death is riddled with an inexcusable feeling of guilt that is hard to escape even for a bat. But sometimes you got to do what you got to do and when given every opportunity to exit fails than the final blows must be struck. Swinging at a bat is an exercise in futility, I actually think they prefer it as to make a fool of you as they swing around to take another run past you gleefully gliding under or over top your board. You have to raise the board up high and come down across the top of it knocking them to the ground and going in for the kill. Quick, easy and well not so unapologetic as you bring forth a sorry buddy.
It may sound like I have a lot of bats but the majority of those come from tenants who leave a screen cracked open or their screen door doesn't shut right when they come in. I had one a couple years ago I never did figure out how he got in but by the time I got the board my cat had jumped up on the banister and knocked him down inside a trash can which I threw the board over. I carried him outside, threw the trash can into the yard but he never came out. I creeps over there, looks inside and he flew out at me, took a spin up into the air than came back at me again before he flew off into the night. I guess he was getting the last laugh on me until he showed up in the basement a few days later and got whacked permanently. He was getting in through a pipe from the chimney from when the water heater use to be gas, the covering over the hole had come off.
But I hadn't seen a large bat like this one in quite a few years and from the massive size it appeared to be sent shivers down my spine. Upon getting ready to exit the bathroom I decide to take a really good look up to see if he was still as stationary and that I hadn't disturbed him. I thought to myself there's just no way a bat can be that massive. So I brave to take a step closer and at this point I am not sure if it's a bat or what. I go out and grab a broom that was sitting in the hallway. I go back into the bathroom and with the door as a shield I take the broom and tap it up towards the wall by where it was. It didn't move. I took another step this time intending to slightly tap it, it still didn't move. Whatever it was it was either dead or it wasn't a bat at all, it happened to be the later. Just one more thing the unexpected long time guest has managed to find a place for something that was never intended to serve as such. A washcloth of all things, just one more of those strange things that I seem to attract. I mean really, look at that, that's probably more than once in a billion chances a washcloth ends up against a wall forming the perfect leg of a bat. That someone obviously threw it up there and it landed like that is probably more like one in a trillion. Now you can see why I was about to shit my....um, toilet.
