Hellchick

We have what was a bat situation that has sinced turned into a bat problem. In fact, I'm literally typing this on my laptop in the living room where I can hear something scratching and clawing either in the piano or behind it to my left, and something knocking around somewhere in the dark office at the end of the living room. And there's something banging around in the pipes now under the floor beneath my feet.

Everyone we know here who grew up in the midwest is laughing at our reaction to what is a commonality in this part of the country, but is our first exposure to it. I should have known something was amiss when two days after we moved in, my cats had either killed or found and left me a bat on the living room floor.

A month or so after we moved in, Len was doing laundry in the basement. He ended up staying up late on night and around 3 am decided to change the last load. He stumbled downstairs bleary-eyed and without his glasses and didn't bother turning on the main cellar light. That's when he met Norman.

The bat flew at him and he was shocked awake, and with a "holy shit!" he ran up the stairs and slammed the door. Since we had to get our laundry we had to go into the basement at some point. Len decided to call the bat Norman -- his rationale was that you couldn't be afraid of anything named Norman.

The next time we saw Norman was after sunset one night when Len needed to repair the dryer. Norman had perched himself on top of one of the torchier light bulbs. He didn't seem interested in us. We kept an eye on him anyway. It was the first time I'd ever seen a bat at all.

Norman pretty much kept to himself and even when accidentally confronted never seemed to get cranky over it. One day Len needed to grab one of the torchier bulbs -- he pulled a lamp back and looked at the spiral bulb only to find Norman curled up inside it.

We took to announcing ourselves before going into the basement if it was close to sunset or sunrise. Norman turned out to be an okay bat -- he lived in his light bulb and seemed to understand that the complex tensions in bat and human relations weren't going to be worked out by either of us any time soon. He ate bugs, and we didn't bother him during his regular work hours. And we were all okay with that. At least, until he cousins showed up.

Two nights ago I got home at 12:30 am and promptly went to bed. Thirty minutes later I woke to the sounds of what I thought was one of the cats scratching at the screens in the spare room. After I heard it a second time, I got annoyed and got up. I didn't put my glasses on and I didn't turn on any lights. As I walked into the room I noticed the cats followed me in there. It took just long enough for my tired brain to realize what was going on and for the bat to fly in front of my face.

I yelped and ran into the bedroom, turned on the light, and slammed the door. Just before I shut the door I saw the bat fly past and, it seemed, take a turn to go down the stairwell. I put my glasses on and started nervously laughing at myself. Me, a rational person, afraid of a little brown bat.

I came out and turned on the hall light. Nothing. I stretched my arm as far as it would go and reached into the spare room to turn on the light. There he was, flying around in circles. The laundry basket was holding the door open so the wind wouldn't blow it shut, so with a swift front kick I booted it into the room, grabbed the door, and pulled it shut.

Then I realized that I could find my cat Pico but not my cat Sam.

I opened the door, saw her nonchalantly poke her face out, and I motioned for her like a marine trying not to leave his buddy behind to come out and go! go! go! You can make it!. Like most bugs, the bat apparently fascinated her not one bit. She sauntered out like nothing had happened.

At this point it was about 1:30 am. I ran around the house turning on every single light. If there was one bat actually inside the house, I figured, there could be more. I wondered if this was Norman or one of his friends.

I walked outside and looked up at the window to see if I could see him still flying around. There on the the screen was a dark lump. He'd curled up there, probably trying to figure out where the hell he was and how he could get out. I rummaged around in the pantry for a tupperware and its lid -- I was going to cup it over him, coax him into it with the lid, then take him outside and let him go.

I cupped it over him, but it was so close to the top edge where the wood is that I couldn't quite fit his feet in there. He started squeaking at me -- not that I could blame him, and I was worried I was hurting him so I tried desperately to adjust it. I slid the lid up and tried to get it between him and the screen, but his claws were hooked to it and he wasn't planning on going anywhere. The more I pushed, the more he moved his head up to look at me -- as much as bats can actually look at you -- and the more he squeaked and opened his mouth to show me his fangs. As if to say, "Bitch, I will BITE you if you do not cut this shit OUT." My bat was a little too rusty and I wasn't able to properly convey to him that trying to stuff him into a plastic container was actually for his own good. He was trying to spread his wings a bit and I was getting more and more creeped out, so finally I waited for him to settle down and in a fit of frustration I dropped the tupperware and grabbed the window, then slammed it shut. Fine, stay there. Jerk.

There's about four or five inches of clearance between these old glass windows and their screens, so I watched him for a bit. It was actually fascinating. I watched him lift his head slowly, then turn it just as slowly. Probably echolocating, trying to find an opening. I felt sorry for the little guy, but I was damned if I was going to let him fly around my bedrooms while I was trying to sleep. They can have the basement; they can have the attic. But this bat knew to stay off the west side. He might have gotten a little lost and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but not before making him understand that the living quarters were not where he was meant to be.

Had it not been 2 am and had I been thinking more, I'd have opened one of the other window screens, left it open, opened his window and then shut the room's door so that he could fly away. But I had no idea how long it would take him to go, and I didn't want anything else making its way in there while I waited.

Len came home to see the hallway and spare bedroom lights on and me curled up on the bed asleep. He woke me and I told him the whole story. The next morning his course of action was to slice the screen for the bat and shoo him out of there, and then just replace that screen since he was replacing a whole bunch of them anyway.

I thought that maybe the bat had come into the spare room from somewhere in there given that we'd always heard bat-ish noises from inside the wall behind the TV in the living room, which ran up and formed the outside wall to the spare room. So I shut the door and blocked the bottom with towels the next night when I went to bed.

At 3:30 in the morning when Len got home from work, I was fast asleep in a dark upstairs. (It had taken me at least 45 minutes to finally fall asleep despite how exhausted I was.) I woke to the sound of Len yelling from the bottom of the stairs to wake up, there's another bat and to shut the bedroom door. All I heard was wake up, bat, and bedroom. My heart raced and I grabbed my glasses and then tried to find the cat I saw come into the bedroom. Len, meanwhile, was wondering what the hell I was doing as I walked right past the bat that was by my head in the hallway. He had wanted me to shut the bedroom door so the bat wouldn't come in. I ran back and did that.

An epic battle ensued outside the door as Len tried to catch the bat with towels. He told me later that he'd found it when he came upstairs and Pico was batting at the thing on the floor at the top of the stairs. Eventually he opened the door, towels bunched in one hand, panting, and announced he was going to go show the thing the front door. Then he said that from now on he's not showing any more mercy -- if they want to venture into the living quarters, he'll be happy to reduce their numbers so that they don't have a chance to do it again.

I'm okay with the vague notion that bats might be living in my attic. Having Norman in the basement living in his light bulb was okay, at least until he started inviting all his friends over. And like drunken college students they're starting to crash my house.

And now tonight with the scratching and the sounds of something in the vents. Maybe it's more nefarious than that. I can hear them down there, hunched over their battle maps planning their next move. I need to go armor the cats.