MOI "COUNTRY LIFE"

I expected the snakes and snails and puppy dog tails. But bats?!!!!

Just when I thought we were turning in for the night, the household erupted into chaos. A bat had gotten into the house! Michael first noticed it in his bedroom. So what did he do? What any 14-year-old boy would do: Look for his digital camera and start to chase it! He trapped it in my (yeah: MY) bedroom. After he closed the bedroom doors on said bat (and, unfortunately though temporarily, the two cats), he yells down at me in the kitchen the obvious: There's a Bat in the House!

I immediately call the hubby on the phone -- he was in transit commuting in from SF -- and yell at him: There's a Bat in the House! (Is there an echo on this blog?)

Anyway, said hubby instructs -- go get the long pole with net usually used for clearing leaves from the pool. Then, he proclaims, trap the bat in said net!

Sounds easy, right? But as I didn't have a better idea, down to the other side of the backyard go the dogs and I in nightgown for said pole with net. It's a trek, by the way, that around here unfolds at night to the music of coyotes howling at their dinner targets. I get the pole and net and bring it back to the house. Meanwhile, per the hubby's instructions, Michael's put on his beehiving outfit over his pyjamas so that the bat won't bite him when he tries to net it.

Now, throughout, I am thinking: the odds of us actually netting that bat are in the negative numero range. But we soldier on into our bedroom, Michael all gleeful and I trotting behind him with his baseball bat (I have no clue; I thought maybe the bat would come at me so I'd swing at the bat with a bat. Seriously.) Fortunately, Michael just took one attempt and, Voila!, here he is in raptures over the netted bat!



After torturing the bat with many camera shots complete with flashes, Michael finally agrees to release the poor thing to the night air. More night music of coyotes as we go to the far side of the yard away from the house to release it. 'Twas a beautiful moon tonight, and the bat sailed right to its white cheese. And now may we all all live happily ever after.