All tied up

The first time we had a bat in our house back in November, I didn't know what to do. So, I called Animal Control and they came and solved my problem for me. Round 1 goes to the bats.

As I told this story among numerous friends, I was repeatedly admonished (mocked?) for not handling The Bat myself. Some suggested grabbing it through a bath towel, others recommended hitting it with a racket of some sort, or even opening the front door and waiting for it to fly out on its own.

So, at 4:11 a.m. on Sunday morning, after having been awoken by a bit of thunder, I looked up at the ceiling and saw something circling the fan. About this same time, Amanda started elbowing me and saying/whispering "There's a bat. There's a bat. There's A BAT!" She pulled the covers up over her head as I jumped to my feet and headed into battle. My friend Scott is fond of saying "You can only do what you are prepared to do", and in light of the last confrontation I was prepared to settle things with something other than my cell phone. I headed for the basement, closing the hallway door on my way in order to keep it confined to that "wing" of the house. I grabbed the tennis racket and headed back upstairs.

With all of the lights now on, I looked around our room and in our closet. Nothing. I moved on to the bathroom, sure that the winged beast would spring out from behind the shower curtain like so many movie monsters before him. Wrong again. Amanda had mentioned that she heard Tess fuss a minute before, but I thought it unlikely that Mr. Bat would have found his way into her room because the door was closed. While I was trying to figure all of this out, I looked at the space between her door and the floor just in time to see the bat crawl (yes, crawl) out from under her door. Instinct took over as I swiftly brought the racket of justice to bear on the flying rodent that had invaded my home.

Bats: 1
Wittmanns: 1

I snapped a quick picture with my camera phone, and then placed the carcass in a ziplock bag so Animal Control could send it to K State for rabies tests. We looked Tess over for bites and didn't find any, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to have it tested anyway.

Sorry, it's a little fuzzy, but it was taken with a camera phone at 4:30 in the morning.

…press two

Just in time for the holiday season, we had a friendly visitor come down the chimney and into our home last night. Only instead of being jolly, fat, and dressed in red this little guest was little, brown, and possibly rabid.

At about 1:30 in the morning Amanda thought she heard something. No, that's not quite right. She thought she had heard something AND felt it fly past her in our bed. She did her best to collect herself and listened for "it" again. When she heard it in the bathroom she woke me up, saying that there was, um, something in the bathroom. Still in a stupor, I asked her to elaborate. She said that there was "an animal… or a bird… in the bathroom." I listened for it for a moment and then heard a clicking, rustling sound from that direction.

I jumped out of bed, threw on some jeans, grabbed the aluminum baseball bat that I keep around for occasions such as this, and went on patrol. I flipped on the light in the bathroom and… nothing. I proceeded down the hall toward the "school room" and looked inside. It was still dark, but there was enough light from the hall light that I could see in. That's when I saw it. Continue reading this post »