Guess who came to pay me a visit last night?
A little after two a.m. I was awakened from a restless sleep into an even more restless hell. It seems the Rohnerville Aiport, situated atop the bluffs just across the Eel from stately Fiddlesticks Manor, added the Bat Signal to their all-night-every-night rotating beacon, and out came my housemate from his hiding place in the attic. As I lay terrified and cursing beneath my comforter, to which I ascribe life-saving powers, the bat (perhaps equally terrified) circled the bedroom looking for a way out.
This being the second-shortest night of the year, I briefly considered remaining huddled under the comforter until daybreak, which I figured was only a few hours away. I wasn't going to get any more sleep anyway. But then I realized that this was not a solution, as the Capeless Crusader would just give up and return to the attic, set to haunt me another night. (Alternatively, he might chew through the comforter, get into my hair, and bite me, causing me to die a slow and agonizing death from rabies, as all bat-bite victims do. I still remember a news story from my childhood, in which the victim somehow, miraculously, survived a bite from one of these huge bugs, the first time in the annals of history that anyone had not succumbed to this most horrible of fates. At least, that's how I remember it. It is possible that I'm conflating this story with "Boy Trapped in Refrigerator Eats Own Foot," however.)
I knew I had to engineer a way for Batman to get to the Batmobile and get the hell out of my bedroom. Fortunately, I had the tools at hand. At the head of the bed, shown left, is a large window through which I can look out over the Eel and enjoy the morning light. (And through which my companion can see the Rohnerville Bat Signal.) This window has no screen and opens by releasing a single catch. Indeed, it never really closes, staying open just enough to let the night breeze in and keep the bedroom feeling like it's partly a campsite.
With visions of
The Big Chill in mind (in that film, a skylight is opened to let the bat escape, only to have more bats fly in and join the attack), I bravely reached an arm up out of the mountain of bedding and flipped the latch to open the window, then retreated under the comforter, exposing my vulnerable, quivering self just enough to see the top of the window so I could monitor the bat activity. Shortly thereafter I saw a bat seemingly pass through the window; in which direction I could only guess. (Bats fly so erratically that it's tough to trace their paths, especially with one eye peeping out from beneath a comforter.) I guessed/prayed that he'd gone out to fight crime, and quickly pulled the window shut. Perhaps a minute later, the bat, or one of his relatives, fluttered back over my bed. I've no idea whether he'd failed to leave, or whether I had let an incremental bat in, or whether I had been a multi-bat household all along, but seeing that I was out of ideas (and that I had to go to the toilet really badly), I reached out and re-opened the window.
Once again a bat seemed to fly through the opening, but this time I left the window open, figuring that no bat in his right senses would fly in, and if one did, I'd need the window open anyway. (It's important to learn to think like a bat.) I left it open for what seemed like an hour but was probably better measured in seconds, and when I was satisfied as to the lack of bat-activity, pulled the window closed again. Using the light from my bedside radio, I monitored the situation on the ceiling for, oh, 30 minutes, then crept out of bed to the bathroom, doubled over and cursing my height the whole way. Once safely back in bed, I lay beneath my protective covering of cotton and alternative down and stayed on alert until about 4 a.m., but no bats returned to disturb me any further.
I still can only guess where the bats come from and whether they are back there right now. Just about the only similarity my cottage has with Bruce Wayne's stately Wayne Manor is that the bat ingress/egress is a closely guarded secret. I assume that they live in the attic, which is supposed to be separated from the house by the ingenious application of a piece of plywood, but even with the help of Braulio the farmhand I could not get this awkward, heavy board to fit flush over the opening (see left.) I presume that the bats laugh at my feeble hope that they will not bother to fly through the 4" opening left by the misapplication of the plywood. What I don't know is if they can get into and out of the attic from the outside (they could have come in through any number of open windows while the place was unoccupied, during which period the attic "door" was on the bedroom floor). They're probably up there right now, snickering at how easy it is to terrify me. Maybe I need to get some really powerful bug spray.
Over the past three days, I have unloaded and stacked two cords of firewood (see left--there's more than what's shown), installed and set up my landlord's new 47" HDTV (in an upstairs location), and loaded, transported, and unloaded a new refrigerator, which necessitated removing the doors, which further led to an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the doors.
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