BAT

[dragonlady7]

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so like fifteen minutes ago my sister came down from putting Farmkid to bed and squinted suspiciously into the living room, where Dude and I were sitting reading quietly.

“Do you hear a bat?” she asked.

“No,” I said, baffled; I could hear a cricket, I could hear the dog snoring– I can, as it happens, hear bats, I know I can firsthand, while BIL cannot because he’s got hearing loss from their giant tractor.

“I thought I heard one,” she said. “I dunno, I guess it’s not in here.”

She vanished up the dark stairwell.

Just a moment ago, a bat suddenly hurtled in from the hallway and flew in silent panic around the living room. “Ah fuck,” I said, “she was right.”

“What do,” Dude said, alarmed; he hasn’t been here for the previous Bat Chicanery incidents.

“There’s a net,” I said, and ran for the porch. “Shut the door!”

“Ah shit,” he said, as the bat flew out into the hallway. I retrieved two hand-held nets from the porch, purchased for playing in the creek but mostly used for this exact purpose, and then the two of us flailed around in the kitchen for a bit as the bat expertly evaded us but also clearly did not want to be in this room and we did not want it to be in this room either. But we didn’t want to hit it with the rim of the nets either, which might injure the poor thing.

Finally Dude got a luck shot and snagged it neatly in the center of the net. He ran to the porch door, and i came out after him. “It can’t fly from the ground!” I said, so that he wouldn’t dump it somewhere it’d get stuck.

“Well okay,” he said, but it was having trouble climbing out of the net. I took the net from him and went out to the nearest tree, figuring I’d try to untangle it from the mesh and tip it onto the trunk of the tree, but as I did so, it managed to free itself and shot off into the darkness, apparently uninjured. Happy ending!

“Teamwork,” I said, and put the nets away.

Sister apparently heard none of this and did not come down to check, but also, I mean, if two adults who know where the nets are can’t handle a bat then what are we good for?

I did get a pretty good look at it as it flew around; it was bigger than the last one I tried to catch, definitely fully an adult, and slightly lighter brown, the last one was almost black. Also I had my glasses on though. It was very cute! And very panicked.