2 Bats & a Bird
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| First days in our new home (4 years ago) |
So everyone who knows me, knows I’m not a wilderness girl. I have never been camping and don’t plan to. If the boys want to go, they’ll have to go without me and I’ll stay home with Poppy, our puppy, and Maurice, our beta fish. I love nature, but I prefer it to stay outside.
Shortly after moving into our house in Scituate (our first weekend here) we had an incident. It was about 10pm. Some friends from England were visiting. We’d enjoyed a wonderful day at the beach, had eaten dinner and put John to bed. Boxes were still dotted around the house and we were all relaxing having some beers in the living room. It had been a lovely day, but we were ready to turn in for the night as my husband had to get up at 4.45am the next morning. When our friends knocked on the door, “Um, we think you better come out here,” trying to contain beer fueled giggles. “What’s going on?” We came out to be greeted by a giant black bat swooping and flapping its wings around our living room and kitchen. It kept circling. We decided to try and cover the bat with blankets. I supplied our friends with blankets as I ran the other way screaming and covering my hair! I tried calling Animal Control, but it being 10:30pm on Sunday night, there was no answer. An hour passed and the bat was still flying around our house, alternatively perched on our china cabinet or wrapping it’s claws around the wine colored drapes the previous owners left in the living room. Horrible flashes to something out of Dracula came to mind! I’d had enough. I wanted to go to bed. I did the only thing, I could think of and called the police. Scituate Police were really understanding. Our town is so small and on this Sunday there must have been nothing going on, as they sent not one, but two police cruisers. They arrived shining a spot light on our house. I was mortified. What would the neighbors think? Domestic Abuse? We hadn’t even been in the house a week!
One cop was older, while the other was more macho, both carrying their revolvers in the holsters. I felt much better when the Calvary arrived, except for the fact that macho officer said to the older one, “Wow, did you see the size of the teeth on that thing?” The two police officers, my husband and our two friends all tried to corner the bat. For a second I thought they might resort to using their weapons, but they didn’t. Thankfully we were able to get the bat out of the house and onto the deck into the starry night.Two years later, on April 2, 2009, my husband I were relaxing on the couch watching TV while John was sleeping. The finale of ER was on and we were discussing how much the show had gone down hill and that we weren’t really enjoying the finale. For some reason, the finales never live up to how great the series of a show has been (for example, Cheers). Anyway, out of the fireplace flew a bat. Another, bloody bat! I screamed and threw the blanket over my head, “Get it out of the house! Get it out!” Luke called our neighbor and asked him to bring some tennis rackets. Supposedly, bats can’t see the strings in a tennis racket. Minutes later our neighbor was running down the street with two tennis rackets in his Brooks Brothers suit. Again, what would the neighbors think? After about 5 minutes the rackets did the trick and the bat was out of the house. We put a cap on our chimney shortly after and have thankfully not seen a bat in the house since.
Yesterday, I was writing the blueberry piece for the blog and Conor (our one year old) left the screen door wide-open. I didn’t realize this until I heard something flapping and crashing into the the walls. “Oh my god, a bird is in the house!” I couldn’t stop screaming. Now, it wasn’t a seagull or a crow. It was a tiny sparrow. The poor thing was petrified. It circled, pooed and crashing again into the skylight. “A bird, there is a bird in the house!” Poppy, our lab puppy, was salivating, Conor was pointing at the bird on the china cabinet saying in his sweet, little voice, “bird! bird!” and John was trying to soothe it by cooing at it. Ah! All of this was happening while my husband was on a conference call with a client. They could hear me screaming upstairs and Luke explained, “I think there is a bird in the house.” Thankfully, they found it funny. At this point, I was on top of a stool, on my tip toes, trying to crank open the skylight for the bird to fly out. I coaxed the bird from its perch, but again it flew right into the glass of the skylight.
After what seemed like hours, but wasn’t, my husbands call ended. He got all the screens out of the window and coaxed the bird out. My husband, my hero (I told you all he was my Mr. Darcy)!
Trust me a bird (and two bats) are better in the bush than in the hand, or in the house!
