Er…actually, it was Grimmy—Grimalkin, to be more formal—who was , so to speak, “at the bat”, and I don’t mean any kind of ballgame, base or soft. No, no it was a real bat, die Fledermaus, as Richard Wagner put it, and it was in my shoe (Plenty of room in there). Grimmy was after a bat. And here’s the whole story.
See, I was sleeping one of those warmish nights with the windows in the bedroom open wide enough for the cats to lie on the ledge and keep an eye on the goings-on outside (Cats can do that, night or no night, they just lie there and stare.). Then I started hearing some of the usual carryings-on in the living room, dining room and kitchen; they – all four of the cats – will occasionally start running around, across the table , under the table, up on the counter, over and across chairs, under chairs to pummel each other. It’s a free-for-all, and it was going on in the dark.
Then that sort of quieted down and I must have drifted off, only to be wakened by odd noises beneath the window, sounds of the shoes parked there being moved around, and squeaks. Squeaks? Yup, squeaks, rodent-like squeaks. Familiar-sounding squeaks…familiar, as in what I might hear when there was a BAT in the place…as there often has been. So, I lay there for a while, deciding what to do; I really don’t enjoy chasing a bat around the house and it was 3:00 a.m., but, on the other hand, it was A BAT IN THE HOUSE, so something needed to be done. Turned on the light and looked down on the floor under the window where Grimmy was toying with one of my shoes, which seemed to be squeaking; they don’t usually do that, even when my feet hurt. So, the shoe is making noises, the cat is playing with the shoe, and I’m thinking that I’d better do something pretty fast or we’d either have a bat flying around the house or a cat chomping down on a bat which might be harboring God-knows-what. And then what?
Well, wasn’t going to reach down and just grab the little bugger. Bad things can happen when you do that (Remind me to tell about Uncle Howard and the hay baler machine some time.). Grimmy appeared to have the bat trapped in the shoe, so I went off to find something to put the shoe—with bat—in to be able to put the whole bundle outside so that the flying rodent could take off for parts unknown. Found a large plastic bag—Wal-Mart, probably—returned to find the squeaking still going on, Grimmy still fascinated with the noise and batting at the shoe, and the bat probably fed up with the whole situation and wanting to get the heck out of there. Threw the bag over the shoe, wrapped it up and headed to the front porch, where I put the shoe on the rail, removed the bag and rapidly retreated back into the house, just in case the little critter might be interested in a return engagement in the shoe…a Cinderella Complex, maybe?
Went back inside to finish off the night (as if having a bat in my shoe wasn’t finish enough) and did just fine, thank you very much. In the morning the shoe was still there—empty—and the bat was gone with the wind, or whatever it is that bats turn to for escape. The shoe is back in its spot below the window. Grimmy checks it out every so often. There hasn’t been any squeaking anyplace lately. Let’s hope that it stays that way. One bat encounter per summer is more than enough for me.
Other wildlife has been in evidence lately as well. I spotted a blue heron flying overhead the other day. How it manages to look stately while flapping along, legs trailing, up in the sky, I haven’t a clue. I’ve never looked stately in my life, try as I might. If my invitation to the royal wedding hadn’t been lost in the mail, you might have seen me being unstately on worldwide TV, but we’ll just have to wait for the next state occasion for me to do a demo. At the big fandango for Mom’s birthday (Number 98, and counting!), my grandnephew removed a baby raccoon from the barn—and –wearing gloves, of course—took it out to where its mamma could find it but not return to the barn. Raccoons are not good tenants, nor are woodchucks or skunks. They dig holes, leave debris of various sorts, sometimes terrorize householders and their children and will snatch whatever edibles they can locate…taking time to wash said edibles in whoever’s water dish is available. One of the neighbors on Liberty St. has installed a more-or-less permanent bright light under his front porch to discourage the occupation of the territory by any of these undesirables. Anyway, the baby ‘coon was cute as could be and was calling for its mother, so she should be able to relocate it without any trouble.
And now, since I have turned on the water feature in back of the garage, my porch kitty water bowl may not get quite so much debris from nightly visitors. We can only hope.
I’m hoping for no more bats!
