Cass went to a friends house to go swimming.
After he left, in the resulting quiet, B and I heard a funny squeeeak! Squeeeeak! noise - it sounded, vaguely, like a fan needed oil.
B went upstairs and looked around, but didn't find anything, and chalked it up to something that would make a noise again, and then we'd find it. Probably just the cats messing around.
I went upstairs about half an hour later with the notion of getting a new library book out of my room, went to shut the window fan off in Cass's room, and saw a small brown glossy (squarish? what the heck?) mouse? fieldmouse? thing? inside the window fan.
We had thought to leave Cass's screen to the last to fix - it only had a small hole, (perhaps the size of a nickel? No larger than that.) and he had the window box fan in, so there was no worry....
But now I was staring at a very small indignant animal, flattened out to avoid the blades of the fan. An animal, I suddenly realized, that wasn't a mouse.
It was a bat.
A very cunning little
B (summoned by my trumpeted "B! Oh, B, you gotta come here!") rocketed up the stairs and gaped with me. It was a bat. In the house. And it was in the fan. But unhurt.
So B unscrewed the fan and...let...it...out, helping it hook onto the quince tree.
And then this evening? Me, the girl who doesn't like to ride motorcycles or four wheelers or snowmobiles or anything smaller than a Ford Fiesta....
I learned how to use the ride-on lawnmower. And it was fun.
Although I still think the bat was cooler.
*Not a fruit bat. He was, I think, a Little Brown Bat. (honestly the scientific name)
20 comments:
*shudder*
The riding mower sounds way better.
WOW! What a surprise during your day! Congratulations on not becoming a screaming meeme when you saw the bat. It was nice of you guys to put the bat back in the fruit tree. Very neat thing to do... A lot of people would have just freaked out, and then killed the little bat.
I would have lost it if I found a bat any where near my house. Lost it as in padded room lost it.
Riding lawn mowers are fun. And soo much nicer than bats. UGGH.
Bats are cool. Although I would definitely have got my man to do the actual handling of one!
That is SO cool.
So glad he live to fly another night!
I'm not quite so sure I'd be so friendly. Once while talking on the phone I was doing my mommy business of multi-tasking and I bent to pick up toys. I was just about to pick up a plastic toy resting on our baseboard in our dining room and then something registered, "The kids don't have one of those plastic bats, do they?" And just before I scooped it, I screamed instead. Thank goodness for shrieking madness and men...my brother-in-law escorted the THING (the real scientific name) outside.
Yea, I'll take the riding mower, too. I think bats are wonderful creatures, and I'm grateful that they're around and I watch them in the sky every summer evening - getting the damn mosquitos, but they are the one animal I get completely freaked out by if I see them close up.
Too many horror movies?
Awww - I have kinda a soft spot for bats - I think they're totally cute and underrated...
Bats eat thousands of mosquitoes every night.
Enough said.
I would have to take the riding mower over a bat any day. While I appreciate they eat bugs (and are actually protected species), the ones we found in our old house didn't meet the kind fate you gave yours.
AWWW! He's so cute. I mean...assuming it's a "he". Promise I wasn't looking.
Some people actually make "bat houses" to draw bats in to kill their bugs, but when I ran that idea past my neighbors they got mad.
(Where I'm from, we thought all bats had rabies, or were actual dracula-type vampires, or something and we killed them ON SIGHT.)
Live and learn...
That's cool. Too bad Cass wasn't thee to see it! The fun of living in a rural area, you see (and sometimes provide a home) for bats...
WOW! That's quite a day.
I LOVE our riding lawn mower. I frequently "offer" to mow the lawn for Mike because a couple hours of lawn mowing is what the doctor ordered after a long day (or week) of being Mom. We have some cool headphones that protect your ears from the noise of the mower and play music at the same time.
That is awesome!! How cute is that bat??
What an adorable little bat!! Poor little guy -- he must've been terrified to be stuck in the box fan. I'm glad he was o.k. He'll have nightmares (or I guess daymares)about that for a long time to come.
Riding mowers are fun. I haven't been on one since I was a kid and drove it into the lake. My dad was maaaad.
Your comment on my post about my Pooky's street cred made me laugh and laugh. He only wore the bows for 3 hours. As soon as Jeremy came home from work the bows came out and Pooky's dignity was restored... still... he looked awfully cute (the dog, not the man).
I'm so glad the bat got out OK. I'm a big fan of bats, especially the ones that wheel and flitter over the pool of an evening eating all the mosquitoes.
I think my property has too many trees to mow around and the fact that I have a really long ditch that I have to mow means that I'll be pushing the self-propelled for the foreseeable future.
ACKKKKKK that would have had me fainting.
When I was a kid our neighbours cut down a tree and for weeks after we had bats hanging off the brick of our house wondering where their home had gone. My Scottish grandmother would wack them with a shovel...
I'm with Jen, the riding mower sounds way better. Bats are kinda creepy!
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