The bat

This was a favorite entry from my old myspace blog. It was originally written on August 8, 2006. I had no kids, and wasn't even pregnant yet. My current mood was "amused." (Remember myspace? Remember how we thought nothing could ever displace it? Remember sparkly hearts and stars assaulting your eyeballs, and unicorns chasing after your mouse cursor? And, OMG, remember when I had that haircut??) I don't go to myspace anymore, except when someone asks me for the link to "the bat story." So, inspired by yesterday's snake post, here is the bat... brought into the twenty-tens or the teens, or whatever you would like to call this decade. Enjoy.

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Once upon a time... a couple was deeply involved in their nightly ritual. It was about 2am. The wife, Pam, was watching the Gilmore Girls marathon on Tivo, trying to get the most from her persistent insomnia. The husband, John, was happily snoring beside her, having fallen asleep hours earlier about 10 minutes into an episode of Entourage. Their little cat Monty was snoozing in a C shape on John's other side. (You know that piece of music that is used to indicate an idyllic state of peace? The one they used on the Smurfs? Insert that here.)

All of a sudden, something by the bedroom door caught Pam's eye, distracting her away from Lorelai's witty banter. She thought it was a moth, but no. As it swooped from the doorway and glided below the beams of the canopy style bed within 2 feet from Pam's startled face, she got a good look at it. It was a bat. A very cute bat, looking shockingly like Stellaluna (a bat from a children's book which you should read if you never have). It was tiny, the size of a mouse, a little furry body with the velvety soft skin of its wings stretched out over it's cute little delicate arm bones. But still, it was a friggin' bat.

Pam began to call John's name. He continued to sleep peacefully. She called louder. Still, he slept. Finally, she grabbed him and shook him. "John," she shouted, "there is a bat in our bedroom."

No doubt he thought he was still dreaming, but then he opened his eyes just as the bat took another flapping pass above the bed. The sound emanating from him can be described in only one way. As he leapt from the bed to cower on the floor with his pillow clutched to his chest, John screamed like a woman. Pam began to laugh, a sound which (punctuated by a few shrieks when the bat got too close) pretty much lasts for the rest of this story.

Monty couldn't believe how rude the humans were being. He walked haughtily, clad only in his dignity, into the living room. As he left, he gave them both a superior stare, but neither seemed to notice for some reason. "Pffft," he thought to himself. "Humans."

Pam, still laughing, got out of the bed to open the sliding doors to the deck. She moved back the flat sheet that is thumbtacked to the door frame where curtains should be, and opened the sliding door, hoping the bat would fly out. He did fly out... out of the bedroom and into the living room, where he began to do Ouija board figure eights from the living room to the dining room and back again.

Our scantily clad hero and butt naked heroine (whose laugh was now beginning to take on a slightly hysterical 2am quality), ran out to the living room where Monty was posing pleasingly on top of the room divider. Monty preened, but the humans were still looking at something else. Rolling his eyes, Monty looked up to see what the humans were so excited about, and saw something flying around the ceiling. A bird? A flying mouse? What was this thing? It looked delicious. Monty sent out his mind control to lure the creature closer for the kill. Obligingly, the flying dinner flapped down to within arms reach. At that moment, to his eternal shame, Monty felt himself startle. Skin red with embarrassment under his black fur, he tried to pretend he had lost interest and was merely strolling back into the bedroom, but as he turned the corner, he broke into a low slinking run. He just hoped the humans hadn't seen him.

Meanwhile, John had opened the front door, and Pam the back door in hopes that the little bat would hear the socially inept cicadas who were out to play in the wrong year and would fly out to eat them. The bat toyed with them, flying close to the open doorway and then screeching "Psych!" in sonar as he circled back into the room. The bat was starting to get tired. He flapped up to a hanging candle holder, placed there as if just for him, and gave the funny humans his best money shot as he hung upside down from the candle holder with his little wings folded around him. "They wouldn't want to miss that," he thought to himself, satisfied.

As he hung there, the little bat realized that the humans were looking at him with a strange look in their eye. He was irate. "They think... they think... ," he sputtered in sonar, "they think I'm CUTE! I'll show them." He flew as fast as he could directly at the head of the male human, who gave a gratifying shriek and ducked behind the door. "Ha ha," thought the bat, "I have him now. He flew behind the door with the human into the little triangle created by the door and the corner the human was crouched in. The way that the human scampered out of the corner screaming was very pleasing.

But by now, the cackle of the female human was beginning to hurt his sonar receptors. With one backward glance at the chaotic domestic tableau, he flew out the door and off into the night.

The End