I’d have gotten a pretty good night’s sleep last night, except that, somewhere right around the dead of it, a little bat managed to get itself caught between the barely-open bathroom window and the screen.
We couldn’t hear any vocalizations the critter was making (are the noises they make even considered “vocal”? I don’t know), but it was kicking up a racket against the screen. Mr. and I got out of bed and he turned on the bathroom light, hanging way back in the doorway because, you know, something of some fairly obvious size was banging against a second storey window and, as we were wrenched out of sleep, we weren’t yet in control of our faculties.
The little bugger was pretty clearly upset at the predicament in which he’d found himself, and was thrashing around in an attempt to figure out how to get himself out of it. Mr. Chili went, very cautiously, to the window crank (we have big, casement windows) and opened the glass a little farther from the screen. After a little more tossing about, the bat finally figured out how to return to the open air. I, however, did not figure out how to return to sleep. My brain chased down all manner of subjects, from what I would do if the PowerBall ticket we bought last night is a winner to whether or not I should take a 200 hour yoga training to a bit of drama going on between a couple of members at my health club to what I’m going to do with my speech students this morning to… you get the idea.
I fear it’s going to be a very long day.
(photo courtesy of Sea and Sage Audubon Society)
We should have IMed each other… I didn’t sleep much either. And, believe it or not, it had little or nothing to do with the little guy.
What, you didn’t write blog posts in your head? That’s what I do, though I slept OK last night.
I was up ’round 5.
And a bat….in my house….I might not sleep again for weeks.
ewww, I think I would have freaked out.
On the other hand, how about the fact that the humidity broke and we COULD sleep with our windows open. Today was a glorious day too!
As I’m reading this, it is quarter of 5:00 in the morning, and I don’t have to work today. I’ve been awake since 2 o’clock, when I got up to use the bathroom, and haven’t been able to turn of my brain yet, despite my exhaustion after the first day of school.
By the way, all that was to say that I completely sympathize with you.
Years ago, many years, I and my then, and only, wife lived in a small apartment in Lubbock, Texas, while I was stationed at Reese Air Force Base. It was actually a cute enough flat, shaped pretty much like a shotgun shack. One morning I got up and went in the kitchen to get a drink. A bat had somehow gotten in (there were two small unscreened windows in front we’d leave open a bit in fine weather). It had, with the coming of daylight, dutifully hung itself upside down right over the sink. I’m not even sure why I glanced up. I called her out to see it, and we called the complex’s handyman and he dealt with it.
When I was little – I couldn’t have been more than five or six – my father discovered a bat in my room when he came to check on me one night in August (I had no idea the critter was there). My father quickly herded me out of the room, then called his father, who happened to live next door. I have a strong, clear memory (one of the few of my childhood) of sitting on the kitchen floor with a glass of orange juice, watching my grandfather come in from the back door. Remember that this was August. The man strode through the kitchen dressed in boots and snow pants, his heaviest parka, a snowmobile helmet, and brazier’s mitts. He was carrying a tennis racquet. It was one of the strangest things I’d yet seen, and made enough of an impression to still be an accessible memory.