Before I start, there is something about me that you should know. I have been known to embellish just about any point of a story to make the story better.
But you also need to know that nothing in this tale needs embellishment.
These are the complete and truthful facts as I remember them.
It is 3:00 am. The children are all in bed and all is right with the world because
I am sleeping…or rather, I was sleeping. My hubby gently shakes my shoulder, stirring me from slumber, “Hey, hon, want to see a bat?” Just how fast my mind moves is amazing. I had been, after all, asleep. This is a brief summary of some of the thoughts that went through my head.
Hey hon, where’s the cat?
Say fun, do you need that?
Or, does he have in mind a previously unexpressed baseball fantasy?
All of these thoughts and more flood my mind but I sit up and with lightning speed reply, “Huh?”
“It’s flying around, come see.”
Ah, a real bat. A real live (how else could it be flying?) bat is fluttering about in the sitting room. A live, head swooping, blood sucking, neck attacking bat. Smart hubby had the presence of mind to close the doors to the children’s bedrooms to keep the bat contained and opened the window to help the rat-with-wings escape. The open window is an invitation that the bat doesn’t take. Our usually sleeping cat is very much awake. She is amused by the creature that we must have brought in just for her to play with.
But, first a word about the cat. Our cat is very much an inside cat, declawed and harmless. The only creatures that she has had the chance to stalk and attack are ladybugs and flies. She did master the art of fly catching. She used to pounce on a fly and let it get away, but then she had nothing to play with. So, she learned to catch a fly and keep it in her mouth. When the fly has been sufficiently slobbered upon (just enough to keep it from flying) she lets it go so she can chase a soggy winged fly.
But I have digressed and back to the bat. Imagine that, I see a bat, chased by a cat.
The bat is flying around looking for a place to hang. It tries to cling to the stipple on the ceiling, then onto a painting and then a ceiling fan.
Ever helpful, I watch with fascination and assertively duck whenever the bat flies over my head. My helpful hubby gets a bath towel with which he tries to swat the bat out of the air. We do not want a dead bat. Just a gone-bat.
After a number of attempts, finally the towel hits the bat. Whap! The bat is under the towel on the floor. The creature is making squeaky bat noises. Careful to keep the bat inside the towel, my hubby carefully scoops them together and tosses the whole lot out the window. We are saved. My hero.
Oh, oh. The towel has landed on top of porch roof. The bat is likely trapped under the towel. My annoyed hubby goes downstairs to get a broom to free the bat and retrieve our bath towel.
At this point of the story I need mention that hubby is still in his sleeping garb, which consists of a t-shirt and tighty-whitey underwear. My limber hubby hangs with his top half out the window and his leg half flailing on the inside, and he adeptly uses the broom handle to successfully fling the bat and towel onto the front lawn. Mission accomplished.
Amazingly enough, through all the kafuffle, all of the children are still sleeping. We both go downstairs to retrieve the towel. Across the road from our house is a Tim Hortons and its ever-open drive thru casts its special glow. We squint to see the towel on the dimly lit front lawn. It doesn’t seem to be moving. Brave hubby opens the door slowly and then tiptoes outside to retrieve the towel.
“Shake it off,” I whisper (in case the bat can hear me), “The bat may be attached to the towel.” I do not want that bat to fly back in the house.
Being a dutiful wife, I decide to look for a way to be helpful from the inside of our now bat-free home. A light goes on, figuratively and literally. With alarmingly quick reflexes, it occurs to me to consider and execute the following maneuver. I flip the switch for the front porch light to ‘on’.
Just after the light floods the front lawn, a soft, still voice speaks to me.
O.K., It is a loud booming voice. It is the voice of my beloved saying to me, “Hey, turn out the light.” I suddenly remember that hero hubby is on the front lawn madly shaking a bath towel in his underwear.
This incident spoke volumes to me about just how differently two people can look at the same event. I discovered that my hubby saw things very differently than I did. But maybe that might be just why we are such a good match. The ‘opposites attract’ theory works with us.
I saw this entire episode as something that just had to be related to family and friends and strangers in the streets.
My wonderful hubby didn’t see it that way. He couldn’t understand all the fuss about a bat. He described it this way. ‘We had a bat in the house. I got it out.’
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