Kate and I were attacked by kamikaze rodents last night. We were hearing noises in the walls that sounded like really big mice running a marathon – turned out it was bats.
So, here’s how it all went down.
11:00 p.m. last night, I’m climbing into bed after a long weekend in New York City. I’ve never been that happy to go to sleep.
11:05 – (Screaming from Kate downstairs) “AAAAHHH! OH MY GOD! BAT!... BAT, BAT, BAT!, Jamey, there’s a baaaAAAT!
Me: (lots of expletives) Walking down the stairs, turning the corner, bat in the face.
Kate’s laughing and screaming and pointing at the bat flying circles around the ceiling. Alfie has woken up out of a dead sleep and is barking at the bat.
11:15 – We open the door and run outside – I’m in boxers and a t-shirt and it’s 30 degrees. Kate’s fully clothed and wrapped in a blanket, which she gives me after a few minutes, reluctantly.
The bat can’t make it out the door with echo-location, so it’s just flying in a circle.
Kate: "Maybe we should whistle at it. No, bats are deaf right? Oh wait, are bats deaf or blind?"
11:25 – A homeless guy walks by and we briefly contemplate offering him $5 to catch it. (Is that wrong?)
11:40 – The bat flies upstairs.
11:45 – We crab-walk inside to make sure it’s not getting a running start to dive-bomb us, and we google “how to get bats out of your house.”
Step 1: Don’t Panic ---- (do you consider sitting Indian-style on the floor in your underwear and waving a broom above your head panicking?)
Step 2: Close all doors to corral the bat in one room and keep him from flying around the house. --- (the bat is upstairs now, showering and trying on clothes)
Step 3: Put your pets in a different room and close the door. ---- (we send Alfie upstairs and think he might render the bat deaf with his yelpping bark, making it easier to catch)
Step 4: Wait for the bat to roost. --- (check)
Step 5: Get a hand or dish towel and rubber gloves (optional). --- (OPTIONAL? - seriously?)
Step 6: Carefully place the towel over the bat. --- (what?)
Step 7: Talk softly to him. He is frightened and will make buzzing noises. This is his echolocation. --- (You want me to talk to the bat. What kind of a (@&%*!) website is this?)
12:15 – We chuck the website’s advice, grab the broom and a couple of giant pieces of Styrofoam board and notice the bat has crawled out from between the ceiling and the wall and is back in the same place where he started.
12:30 – I close off the doors to the rest of the house and Kate prods the bat until he’s flying around again. So, we’re both crouched down on the floor, Kate’s waving a broom and I’m waving two giant pieces of Styrofoam, trying to get the bat to echolocate the door. We’re yelling at each other and running into each other and the bat is flying like a drunken pigeon. It doesn’t work, but the bat gets tired and takes a break on the chair so I throw a dishtowel over it.
12:45 – I have a copper pot that I’m going to try to put the bat in, but all of a sudden another bat comes flying out from under the closed door. We run outside and it chases us and flies straight at my face. That’s two bats in my face in one night.
1:00 – We go back inside, thinking that we’ve got things pretty much taken care of, and we see two more bats coming from the ceiling. We give up, grab our things from the bedroom (where we see another bat) and let Alfie out of his crate (he runs straight outside and sits down by the truck – so much for any aspirations we had of him being a guard dog), drive to my sister’s and spend the night on the floor with a couple hound dogs.
Today:
I go home in the morning, after calling the landlord (who tells me that bats are friendly and good to have around when there’s mosquitoes outside) and a man is walking out of my front door holding a bat on one of our spatulas. Amazed that the bat is being so still, Kate asks, “Is he dead?”
The guy says, “No, he’s just cold,” and plops him on the tree in front of our door.
Turns out the guy was hired by the landlord. He gets three more before the day’s out using what appears to be a Swiffer sweeper with glue smeared all over it, applies caulking to the gap in the ceiling and calls it good...
But, as he’s leaving, he says, “Man, when there’s a colony of these things, there can be like 500 snuggled up in a tiny little corner – you never know.”
Great.
