Going Batty..!
Get your favourite cup for your tea, sit down comfortably and put those legs of yours up… it’s time for a hair raising story.
Picture it: a cozy little living room in a split level townhouse… From the couch where I’m reading I can see the stairs leading down to the basement and going up to the dining room/kitchen/entrance… Cali’s sitting on the love seat in front of the tv. All is quiet, it’s a lazy morning and we’re taking our time before trotting off for the day (it is my vacation after all and I will not be spending it indoors).
As I read my emails off my iPad, a shadow crosses the hallway between the main entrance and the dining room.
‘That’s odd,’ I say out loud as I give that direction my complete attention, to which Cali looks up from her book puzzled, replying what you’d think everyone else would ask at that point: ‘Hmmm? What’s odd?’
‘I swear I saw…’ As if on cue, this black thing flies out from the dining room, back into the hallway and up the stairs. ‘A fucking bat!’
Yes, I know, you would have looked at me sternly from across the table, but please forgive me this one incident, if no other. I had just seen the darkest and stealthiest of creatures swoop up the stairs where the bedrooms are… I was thinking it was going to be an interesting night come dusk…! To her credit, Cali shares your enthusiasm and a frown crosses her face. She was about to give me a piece of her mind when the creature swooped down from the stairwell and into the living room this time, flying and circling inches from our faces.
I lie still (never have you seen a man hug a cushion so tightly), she yelps (heck, it might have been both of us for all I know)… Whatever admonishment she was thinking of was suddenly forgotten, and the guest makes a second pass at us, before swooping down to the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. My basement doors are fully open (I’ve been cleaning and moving things in the crawl space and rec room of late, oh.. And had done laundry, so the furnace room / laundry room are open too…
On the bright side, ‘Hurray..! That’s much better than the bedrooms!’ The bat, I gather, likes the darkness better anyway… So I risk a look, and turn on (flick the switch? Honestly, English is my second language, you tell me!) the landing’s light, hoping I don’t upset the thing and it comes screeching up the stairs towards me again.
One heart beat… Two… Three…
I decide to brave the stairs and open all the lights down there. I open the laundry room first and shut the door (there’s a metal grill there, I’ll see it if it flies around without risking a heart attack), I open the one in the rec room where my office is (I half hope it’s there, so that I don’t work while on vacation). I don’t see anything flying in there, and well… Closed the door to that too… All that’s left is the crawl space. The dark dreadful place from my childhood! If it’s in the crawl space, I don’t want to know… It deserves some quiet if it did go there to get out of my bedrooms…
So I close that door too and prop it shut. That thing is not coming out… Not until the condo can send someone to find it (hey, I read the corp’s by-laws… Rodents are their problem…! Not mine.)
By that point, both Cali and I are happy to escape the house for the day. Before we do, I close all the other doors in the house. That night… I swear I hear something between the walls, but it’s still basement level and there’s no exits that way. What matters is that it’s not in the bedrooms. I retire for the night and sleep… And wake up the next day. All is well. No sign of the thing, but I’m not gonna fold that laundry quite yet… Right? Right!
Day goes by… Nada. She’s left us alone for my birthday. Nice manners! I’ll take that… Finally, the day Cali needs to start packing arrives… She’s leaving that afternoon..! What do I hear scratching at the laundry room vent? Got it! I know where she is, but I have to drive Cali to the airport… Stay tight, bat… I’ve emailed the condo manager… And now, I’m off to see Cali go.
Upon my return roughly an hour later, the condo manager sends his goons to take care of the bat… But they don’t find her.
Great help, I’ll be calling them again… Fine, laundry will wait forever. Whatever.
So I go about my day, enjoy the peace and quiet I haven’t had since Cali was in town… Workout, shower… Sprawl myself buck-naked in the bed to dry off and read a book. By then it’s like 9pm… ‘Ah… This is the life!’ I think as I turn the page, only to see some black thing swoop by the corner of my eye. ‘Is that..? Oh Christ..! It is!’ (yes, I know…)
Did someone scream like a little girl? I have no idea. All I know is that a few seconds later I had my bathrobe on and was scrambling for a flashlight..! I wasn’t going to bed with that critter on the loose, uh-uh!!! I search upstairs now and realize… Aha.. I left the bathroom door opened. And who do I spot in my bath? Her! (no, not Cali! I made sure she got on that plane and kissed her right before she boarded!)
‘You just sit righhhht there…’ I tell it as I close the door and cover my head with my bathrobe, trying to not let any loose parts dangle temptingly as a target. Here I am, a grown man, fiddling with the window’s screen in his birthday suit, trying not to expose his backside as he tries to take screen off the window, turn off the lights, close the door… Put a towel under the door (Can I make it any clearer to the thing? “Go… Away… that way! Out the window… C’mon on now!”)
So I rush outside in the cool night air and observe the bathroom window…
One minute… two… three…
Suddenly a dark shadow swoops out from the window, flies around once, twice… And now flies towards me, swoops above my head (in what I gather is bat speak for thank you) and disappears into the pine next to me.
“You’re welcome,” I say to the creature as I head back into the house to cover the window and check the house one last time.
I get to the bathroom again and take a good look. Now I know why it stayed in the shower so long… It took the time to drink from my shower’s water (three days in my house without a drop!) She left me some guano and this story for my troubles.
‘And now to bed…’ I think to myself as I close the bedroom door.