KNOTTY PROBLEMS

The thing that has been most consistent in our long marriage is that when my husband is out of town, especially when he’s overseas,  certain "events" occur.

Soon after we moved into our new home in the country, he sailed off to Finland. That was a safe distance since I was writing day and night on my master’s thesis. One night at 3 a.m., I was staring at the computer screen in the only enclosed room in our home––my husband’s den. My tired brain was parsing out the delicate relationship between pain and suffering when a bat flew between my face and the computer screen. I hit the floor and the dogs went wild. Luckily, the creature flew out of the den into the main part house, and I slammed the door. “Gotcha!” I said to two blank-faced Aussies.

Of course, the bat had me. I was in a little room, a very cold room, and he had the entire rest of the house. I thought about my situation until 4 a.m. when I could no longer stay awake. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? So I opened the door, and not having a HazMat suit handy, grabbed a small hand towel from the bathroom and placed it on my head. I was not about to offer up a landing strip of my hair for the beast to land on.

The house is wide open––living room, dining room, kitchen, lofted bedroom and TV room, two small third-level lofts. No walls. The state park building, my husband calls it. I took quiet, slow steps through every inch of the place looking for that little Velociraptor. Unfortunately, the walls, beams, and ceiling are knotty pine, and the floors are knotty cyprus. Every one of those thousands of knots had wings.  By 5 a.m., I figured he could just have at me; I was falling asleep. So I climbed into bed and pulled everything I could reach over my face, leaving one tiny slit to breath through. Oddly, I slept.

In the morning, there was no sign of him, so I figured he had exited the house by whatever means he had entered it. I stood at the kitchen sink running water for tea, peering out at the Baltimore Oriole on our feeder. When my near-focus kicked in, I noticed the bat 16 inches in front of my face, wings splayed, clinging to the window over the sink. I grabbed a 13 X 9 inch cake pan from the counter and slammed it against the window over the beast. Ha! Gotcha for real this time!

It’s amazing how hard it is to hold your arm straight out in front of you for long periods of time. Actually, within about 4 minutes, my arm and shoulder were spasming. What I needed was something to slide up between the window and the bat, trapping it in the cake pan so I could humanely return him to the wild. What I needed was a cookie sheet!

The cookie sheets were in the bottom stove drawer about a yard and a half to my left, but I had to hold that pan against the window. I do, however, have a secret weapon––long toes that function like Swiss Army knives. I stretched as far as possible with my left leg and pulled the stove drawer open with my toes. It was a bit tougher to reach down to the bottom of the drawer without letting the cake pan slip. I stretched as far as I could. The cartilage between my ribs was snapping like the elastic on old underpants, however I did reach the cookie sheet. Cookie sheets are much heavier than one notices when lifting them by hand.

I placed the cookie sheet flat against the window right below the cake pan and began to slide it upwards. I truly didn’t want to hurt the bat’s little feet. I went slowly so that it had time to let go of the window and adjust its position in the pan. Somehow I slid the cookie sheet all the way up, and it formed a fine cover for the pan. I could carry the bat safely outside, well contained. I was feeling triumphant or at least a little smug.

Onto the deck we went. Heck, he was just being a bat, acting like a bat should. I held no grudge. I stood on the deck and opened the pan to the sky so that he could return to the wild unharmed. Unfortunately, he clung to the inside of the cake pan. I gave a little shake. I gave a big shake. I smacked the bottom of the pan.

How could I encourage the bat to let go? While I was wondering, he fell out and landed at my feet. And there he sat. The phrase that seeped into my mind at this point was aberrant bat behavior. I do respect nature and the right of all living things to be left alone, but I had no intention of experiencing weeks of rabies shots for this little jerk.

I placed the broom bristles gently against the bat. He was about 6 inches from the railing, and I hoped to urge him through the rails and out of my life. I was very careful to be gentle in case there was some kind of coating on bat wings that might affect flight if it were disturbed. I gave a little nudge, whereupon that filthy sky-rat stood up, spread his wings and growled at me. Even as I raced backwards, I could see that his jaws were open 180 degrees, and he had sabers for teeth.

I grew up on a golf course, so my next move came naturally. I placed the broom squarely in front of me, shoulders even, head down, and swung back keeping my left elbow straight. I drove that sucker right off the deck. And much like golf balls that simply dribble off the tee, he simply fell off the deck and landed in the garden right below me, hissing and growling as he went.

At least he was gone. I turned to go back in the house and looked into the faces of my two dogs. Soon we’d be going for our morning walk. And soon they’d be rounding the house looking for the bat who was still screeching. For a fleeting moment, I thought––hey, they've had rabies shots––.  We hadn’t fully settled into the house. Maybe we could just move. 

I walked out front to the little garden wall I’d built and took the biggest, heaviest rock from the pile. It took all I had to lift it over the deck rail and align it with the still growling bat below me. I let it go. It was a horrible, sickening thud. Horrible and yet at some level, quite satisfying. As far as I know that bat still lines the indentation under the rock, but I’m not checking, even after 15 years.

More on bats:
http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/bats.php