We had an interesting night last night.
I suppose we should have realized something was out of sorts when we started noticing our cat Sasha paying an inordinate amount of attention towards our fireplace. I had caught her in there once, and for a good chunk of the evening she sat in front of it, just staring at it. Of our three cats, Sasha is the hunter; she has the best track record of locating intruders and terminating them. We weren’t sure what was going on, and put it down to her being weird (like she can be sometimes).
We had already gone to bed, had the lights out, and were watching The Daily Show. As we were watching, I saw a black shape sail right in front of the TV. I almost literally did a double-take, wondering if I was seeing things. Then I saw the black shape circling over us, and I brought it to Jennifer’s attention by saying, “There’s something in the room with us.” For her part, Jennifer thought I had lost my mind and meant there was someone in the room. I got up, headed to the door quickly, and turned on the light.
That was when we both realized that I wasn’t seeing things. There was a bat flying around our bedroom.
I’m not proud, but some combination of my “aspieness” and fear drove me to run away. I’m sure the bat didn’t mean me any harm and was probably as scared as I was (if not more so), but I was caught completely off-guard and had absolutely no idea what to do.
Jennifer got out as soon as she could, and we tried to think of a strategy. Pretty soon, she had an idea: she went into the garage, and grabbed a small raft float thing we use for when we go to the pool. It’s large, round, can fold, and the inside is mesh fabric. Her plan was to go into the bedroom, and try and catch it with the float.
Her plan worked flawlessly. As soon as she walked into the bedroom, float open, the bat flew right to it and latched onto the mesh. Our guess is that he hadn’t been able to find somewhere to land until then, so he was grateful for the perch. Jennifer then closed the float like a taco, carried it out the back door, and let him loose.
We’ve scheduled for someone to come out this weekend to check our chimney, just to make sure there are no other uninvited guests. Otherwise, we’re just glad no one was hurt in that little adventure, whether bat or human. :-)
As for Sasha, when the bat was flying around our bedroom, she was sat on the bed just watching it (it was well out of her reach). If I had to imagine her expression or thoughts, it would likely be one single sentence, directed to us:
“I told you so.”