O.k. A week ago. Saturday night. Jen and I have just got in bed. We hear something upstairs. Something hit the floor. Huh. Whatever could it be? We get out of bed. And what are we wearing? Jennifer is sporting a t-shirt (Alaska, 1959, white shirt, blue line-drawing thing featuring bears and fish and float-planes and mountains – a gift from Alaska-native Kyli Kleven) and underwear (underwear that we bought at an auction in Los Angeles – these were the underwear that Elizabeth Taylor wore in National Velvet … nah. I’m kidding.) And what was I wearing? Two drops of Parisian perfume, because that’s how my baby likes it. Nah. Kidding. No perfume. I wasn’t wearing anything. I was, however, coated in man-smell.

I flip on the light. We walk upstairs to a room that would be an attic if it wasn’t finished off. I see two small bears on the floor. Bears that had been standing on the window sill in front of a screened window that was open. Had there been a sudden gust of wind that knocked the bears to the floor? An earthquake? Or, perhaps:
•A. A local disturbance in the electromagnetic field.
•B. Our new neighbor is a Jedi Knight and used The Force to throw the bears down to the floor where they belonged.
•C. The rubber bears became self-aware, realized the Yawning Void of Existence, and plunged off the window sill in a fit of despair.

While all of these are viable possibilities (thought, statistically, three out of the five are highly improbable possibilities), what happened next is the more likely cause of the falling bears (although we did not have visual confirmation and actually proving it would require CSI sort of stuff… but even then, I don’t know if any CSI stuff could really prove it).

So, we’re standing near the top of the stairs. I’m looking at the small bears. Jen is one or two steps below me. And…OHJESUSFUCK! IT’SABAT! IT’SABAT! FUCK! SHIT! IT’S A BAT! He (she?) comes flapping in with that weird kind of what-are-they-on sort of TOTALLY ERRATIC GUIDED BY VOICES FROM HELL kind of way. It flops in and lands on a yoga mat. It writhes around, flopping, flapping – asanas no yogi would dare – possessed by the Dark Lord, twitching like a DEMON-SPAWN MARIONETTE CONTROLLED BY THE SUPREME EVIL PUPPET MASTER. In my rush to flee downstairs I nearly knock my dear sweet wife to the bottom of the stairs. But, as it turned out, she wasn’t aware of being knocked. She was more aware of whether her feet could actually move fast enough down the stairs. Run into the bedroom. Slam the door. Stuff a blanket under the door. Quick! Another blanket over the heating vent, because, what if the bat became green steam and materialized in our room? A blanket would surely prevent green steam from entering our room.

Do we go after the bat? No. We do not. Last year we had the good fortune to have a bat IN our bedroom. After screaming like six-year olds for a long time (yes, under the sheets), we caught it (a series of blankets, sheets, bathrobe and a box) and threw the whole thing (box, blankets, bathrobe, sheets) high into the night sky before running into the house. See, having the bat contained in the bedroom was a small blessing. “Contained” being the operative word. For this year’s bat: no. Not contained. It’s not in the bedroom, right? Fine. We’ll find it in the morning. We sleep. Do we find it in the morning? No. We do not. Do we even look for it in the morning? No. We do not. We put it off as long as we can. It’s starting to almost get dusky. Finally, we go off on our bat hunt. No luck. We realize that, yes, this bat could be anywhere.

Disconcerted but soothed by the illusion that the bat will remain in the finished-attic part of the house, we make dinner. We set up the computer to watch LOST – a program about fear, madness, and our weaker natures. We eat dinner. We watch the program. One episode down, one to go. It’s halftime. I go into the kitchen to make a yogurt drink (one cup yogurt, half cup water, quarter teaspoon ginger, quarter teaspoon cardamom, a dribbling of agave nectar, blend it for a minute, half for Jen, half for me … it’s supposed to be good for digestion). Jen comes into the kitchen. And … OHJESUSFUCK! IT’STHEBAT! THE BAT!

So as to become perfectly aligned, balanced, and grounded – essentially one with the universe – I throw the yogurt on the floor. So as to provide an even distribution of calm psychic, uh … chi? chutzpah? disembodied kundalini? … when the bat goes one way, we go the other. And, yes, Jen and I are both screaming like six-year olds (as someone pointed out to me, I am “Childless Man” so maybe six-year olds don’t scream anything like this at all… what do I know?). Why is all our Bat Gear (blankets, various size boxes, sticks, gloves, hats, long-sleeved shirts, closed-toe-shoes, long pants, goggles) upstairs? Are we insane? OMG! What if we ARE insane? What if the bat turned into green steam during the night and snuck into our nostrils and contaminated our cerebral cortexes?! AND NOW WE ARE HIS MINIONS! FOREVER!

I rush upstairs. Gloves. Hat. Box. Blanket. Shirt. Run downstairs. Where’d he go? He’s in the kitchen! Slowly. Steadily. With fear. With pounding heart. With sweat under the wool cap and the long sleeves and trousers and rubber gloves … I creep into the kitchen. I secure the area. He has DISAPPEARED! ALL IS WELL!

We sleep. All the doors closed. Blankets stuffed over vents and cracks. During the day we gather advice:
• “Shut off all the lights. Gradually turn on lights, one room at time, leading it outside through an open door to a porch light.”
• “If it bites you, you can’t feel it. You will get rabies and die.”
• “If it’s in your house and you sleep in the house, it might bite you in your sleep. If it bites you, you can’t feel it. You will get rabies and die. Or maybe only one of you will get rabies and then, by the light of the full moon the Bitten One will become a wolf and eat the other non-bitten person. Beware the bat in the house!”

Each night, as the sun sets, we don our gay apparel: gloves, long pants, hats, long sleeves, cardboard boxes, steel-toed boots, automatic weapons, nerve gas, Bible, garlic, crosses of various sizes, wooden stakes, holy water, etc. We tuck ourselves into the corner of the room. We watch LOST. We scan the rest of the house for flying mammals. We see nothing. After two days, we can’t bear the suspense. We call Steve Beckman’s “Anything Wild Animal Control.” He comes by. He explains, “You got a bat in your house, it’s an adolescent. Two years in a row, it’s not a fluke. You got a colony under the eaves. These adolescents aren’t gonna listen to their elders. They’re inquisitive. They get into the walls. They crawl around. And then they’re flying around your kitchen. They go anywhere. Once I found one in a shot-glass. Who knows where he is? If he starts flying around, try to stay calm. Follow him. Watch where he lands. And call me. Anytime. They come out at night and so do I. That’s my job.”

Each night we wear our outfits. But as the nights went by, it seemed that maybe our adolescent was gone. Maybe he wasn’t so interested in egging our house, T.P.’ing the yard, and hand-jobs in the back seat? Maybe he had gone OUTSIDE with the grown-ups? Our vigilance wavered. We might have even seemed “relaxed” to untrained eyes. Steve calls to say he’s going out of town for a couple of days. Ah, we say, now the stupid bat will show up with Steve out of town.

But no. Still no bat. More ease and relaxation. Cut to Saturday afternoon – a week after our first Bat Encounter for 2009. Jen’s upstairs doing a Z.B. session I’m in the kitchen shaving some ginger… what’s that sound? What… oh …. jesus…. fuck… it’s … the … bat… in a glass pitcher! …. quick quickquickquick! Find a top find a top findatopfindatopfindatop!! Tupperware top. But it’s not snug. At all! Get a bag get a baggetabag. Two hands, one holds the pitcher, one on the top. Hold the top down with one hand, kneeling at the closet, one hand scrabbling around to get a plastic bag. Cover cover cover. O.k. O.k. He’s in there. He’s caught. Steve’s not around. I can’t just let the bat fly away. I call anyway. Then I call Champaign Animal Control. They both turn up in minutes – Steve’s son and the Champaign Animal Control officer. They take the bat to the U of I to be Tested for Rabies to make sure that one of us doesn’t turn into a wolf and eat the other.

I haven’t looked this up, but I remember hearing that if you get rabies you had to get ten shots in the heart with a foot long needle. Is this true? Is it still like this? It sounds so medieval. Hasn’t somebody invented a rabies-thing where you slip a wee button under your tongue and it cures the rabies, tastes like cherries and a pleasant side-effect is that you are prone to multiple orgasms for six months post-trauma? Let’s get to work people.

I noticed that when they took her (him? Charlie? Charlize? this young cheeky furry kid who didn’t seem so scary after s/he was transferred into a Cool Whip container apparently they don’t have bones, it’s all cartilage or something) they sealed the container with tape. They did not put air holes in the top. And then I realized, duh, this little guy is going to die. Damn. I’ve killed my share of mice and cockroaches and the other night, in the thick of the Bat Blitz, I killed a hornet the size of my thumb … but the bats are all dying anyway. All the little browns and that white-nosed syndrome that’s wiping them out. Along with something else that’s wiping out the bees. And another something that’s destroying the frogs. And if there were more bats wouldn’t they be eating those disgusting gnattish-aphid things that are absolutely plaguing our fair city? I wish I wasn’t so freaked out by the wee flying bats. But they, uh… they freak me out. And I wish them the best – outside our house.