Batty

Just when I thought things couldn't get more interesting... So Brian and I are sitting in the family room at 10:30 last night finishing up watching our DVRed Biggest Loser when we hear something in the kitchen. At first I thought it was Jonah, which hasn't happened in a looooong time (him getting out of bed), but you never know. Well, the noise is gone, we don't hear anything new, and so we assume that something must have fallen from the ceiling. About ten minutes later Brian goes into the kitchen to get me some water. While walking in there, he kicks a sleeping bag that Jonah had left on the kitchen floor and sees something, a bat, fly out from the bag. I am unaware of what's going on and the next thing I see is Brian jumping around our familiy room making a Tigger-like "hooo hooo hooo hooooooo" noise. At first I assumed he was trying to play a trick on me, so not buying it, I calmly asked him "What?". He said, "I think we've got a bat". After him eventually convincing me that he's not trying to trick me, we realize we need to get a course of action. We had no idea where the bat had gone. Brian thought he saw it fly towards the kitchen counter, but he's not sure. I have seen nothing. So, Brian grabs a blanket and two tennis rackets out of the garage. In the meantime, I called animal control and told them we have a bat, but they said unless we know the location of it they will not come over. The don't hunt for bats they said. Just what I wanted to hear. So, Brian and his rackets went on a bat hunt around our house. He's hitting everything in sight trying to scare the bat up, and if he starles it, he plans on drilling it with the tennis racket. Not my top choice, but at this point I just want the bat gone. After about 15 minutes of hunting, I told him I just figured that bat had flown out and we should give up and go to bed. Ignorance is bliss and I was tired. Brian makes one more look at the kitchen counter and thinks he might have spotted it. Since we have no lighting in our kitchen right now except a little light over the sink, I had to take the camera and use it to light the corner to confirm. Sure enough, the little bat is laying between our breadmaker and electric can opener, directly on our kitchen counter. (Please note, if these kitchen counters weren't going to be replaced already, they certainly would be now.) I immediately get on the phone with animal control, confirm that they'll be there in "5 to 45 minutes" and for the next half hour, this is the scene in our kitchen:

I was afraid to take a picture too close and startle it with a flash, so this is the only picture we have. While he’s waiting, ready to strike, Brian keeps telling me that he’s going to swing at it. I keep telling him to just let it be and after what seemed like an eternity, the doorbell rings. A young woman in her early 20s from animal control came to our rescue. She saw our construction and said “whoa” and then once she saw where the bat was, she put a flashlight on it, moved stuff around to expose it on the counter, and all the while it just laid there. I couldn’t believe it. At this point she tells me that she doesn’t like bats either, then looks at Brian with his rackets still raised and laughs. She got out her Folger’s coffee can with holes poked in the top, put it over the bat, and put the lid on. And that was it! I couldn’t believe how easy it was. We could have taken care of it ourselves, but either way I was thankful that we had a pro doing the dirty work. After another half our of winding down, we finally got to bed and then I laid there replying the scene over and over in my mind. I had asked the woman if they would put up netting or anything over our roof vents and she said they don’t do that. I then asked what are the odds of it happening again and she said it was slim. But then I got to thinking… if our ceiling had just come down today, and the bat had come in tonight, our odds were actually a one in one chance. Not the odds I like to hear. The other option is that the bat had already been in our attic and now was freed with the ceiling coming down. Something else I also didn’t want to think about. Either way, the contractor of our remodel (my dad) got a 7:30 phone call this morning from me and I have been assured that in the near future we will have someone on our roof, which they had to do anyway, to net the vents. In the meantime, I am going to pretend like this never happened and could never possibly happen again. :)