...in the bathroom getting ready to go to bed last night. It was dark in the rest of the upper level of the house. Just the bathroom light casting shadows into our bedroom across the hall.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move in the bedroom.
At first, I dismissed it as our 80lb boxer/lab, Maya, but I realized that she had not budged from her resting place when I came up the stairs.
And there it was again - a shadow at eye level moving in my room. I leaned out of the light of the bathroom to get a better view, and it went by again...
A BAT! A HUGE FUCKING BAT!
Keep in mind that I had spent the last 2 summers working on a bat program to get the public to accept the little creatures as a part of nature...
but not in my BEDROOM!
I screamed to the hubs, "There's a bat up here!" He came darting up the stairs.
(I later found out that he thought that I said "there's a MAN up here!" and came to learn that with his previous experience with indoor bats that he would have taken much longer than he did to come up the stairs.) :)
He and Maya came up the stairs slowly as the bat zipped in large circles in the room, making a pass in front of the door about once every 5 or 10 seconds.
At first reaction, we decided to lock Maya in the second bedroom to keep her out of the way. Hubs stood with the door cracked to get the pattern of the bat, but it was moving too fast. We then decided to allow Maya to do her thing.
For those of you that don't know, Maya holds her own in the house by catching the bugs that sneak in because we have to let her out to go potty. The command is "get the bug" and she glazes her eyes, and, for the most part, succeeds in catching and eating or slobbering up the insect. Well, we thought that this would be an awesome bug for her to catch - I don't think she was about to correct us on the proper classification of the zooming animal.
By this time, we had the bedroom light on (which also turns on the ceiling fan). Maya was released...she chased it around a little. This disoriented the bat enough to cause it to bump into the ceiling fan, but it was hardly phased. Maya quickly lost interest and decided that she wanted to wrestle with Hubs instead (still quite the puppy). Maya's shift in the bedroom was over.
Again locked in the other bedroom, she whined as Hubs ventured into the room to trap a resting bat - to no avail. One of the wings of this bat was the length from the tip of my pinky finger to the tip of my thumb. A freaked out bat who just wants out and is being chased in instant sunlight was quite confused and a close encounter was not desired by either of us. (I already had plans to sleep in the other bedroom or living room if we couldn't get it.) He hurried back out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Back to the original stance, Hubs had the door open trying to catch the bat's pattern, and all of the sudden there was no bat!
SHIT! Where is it?
Hubs said that it flew past the door toward the wall and never came back into the middle of the room. Hubs, armed with a butterfly net, and I, with a towel over my head, began to carefully search slightly cracked drawers, behind the dresser, under the table...NO BAT!
So we called in the dog..."get the bug!" Because the bat was no longer flying, she began to pursue a fly - good dog?
Well anyway, Hubs and I spread to the rest of the room searching under the bed, inside lampshades, and behind the blinds.
Still, no bat.
Maya had now become enthrawled with her bed. It was way past her bedtime and with less-than-hinting sighs before this event - she had announced this downstairs.
She began to fluff her pillow - something that my other dogs have done, but not her - strange.
She began to sniff beneath it, and I picked the pillow up to see - nothing - stupid dog.
I continued my search...maybe it is behind the tv. Maya was still messing with the pillow. I looked closer, and along the wall (right where my hand had grabbed the pillow seconds before) a bat "thumb" was reaching up and tucking back just as Maya would strike!
Good Dog, Smart Dog, "GET THE BUG!"
The bat, thoroughly exhausted ended up in the middle of the floor. Maya, a kind and playful dog, nudged the bat, but did not attack. Hubs, on the other hand, pushed Maya out of the way and trapped it.
It was safely released outside, and it flew away.
As always, there is a happy ending, Maya got a cookie for getting her bug, I got to sleep in my bed, Hubs got to get me to stop screaming like a chick in a horror flick, the bat flew away!!
Oh, what a night!
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Follow-up: Today is my beloved Maya's 8th birthday (she was 2 or 3 when the above story occurred). She's been by my side through thick and thin. Now, she lays passed out beneath my feet in the cool breeze of the air conditioner.
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