This is a new ACEO – I hope you like it!! I had a very eventful uneventful night!!!  We have had a history of bats coming inside here .. so I have gotten a little sensitive to wings flapping in the dark … inside!!!  In the past decades (as an adult) I have had between 10 and 20 bats in the house. And I get scared! So there was a little incident last night.

Lime Delight, Digital © Diane Clancy

Around 2 o’clock (am – the middle of the night) I wake to the sound of flapping wings. I turn on the light, jump out of bed and close the door (with me outside the bedroom door).  Then Susan tells me there is a bat in her room too … and she jumps out and closes her door – light off.  We run around closing all the doors to the hallway to contain the bat to the hall … if possible.  I get the tennis racket ready – to catch the bat to put it outside hopefully not hurting it.  Susan gets her towel ready.

As Susan stands by the door, she can hear the wings flapping and tells me not to scream – I scream when I get REALLY startled – like seeing a bat fly in my direction.  I tell her I want to put her room light on because I am hoping that it is only one bat and not two.  As we are waiting trying to figure out what to do next … having opened the bathroom window but not lifting the screen yet – bats will go toward a stream of fresh air – believe it or not they are not trying to terrorize me …. we note that we have not heard the high pitched squeak of the bat sonar … so we begin to have a little hope.

Close to a half an hour had passed by then … and we figured we better so SOMETHING! So I opened the screen in the bathroom and we opened the door to my room … where we could still hear wings flapping. Susan pushed open the door and then stood back to get out of the bat’s way … I stood ready to direct it toward the bathroom and hopefully to freedom.

Hearts pounding, we waited … and out flies a big moth!  Susan gets my door closed again and we look at each other, having more hope. So I use the tennis racket to gently knock the moth off the high woodwork and Susan puts the towel over the moth and scoops it up … so I get the towel, step in the bathtub and let the moth go out the window.  Whew!! Probably just the moth!

So we go back in my room and poke at the clothes hanging on hooks and poking anything we can think of with our new-found courage to flush out any remaining bats. We call my room clear and then move on to her room to make sure the bats are gone (as if there were any at all) from there too.

We call the house a bat-free zone (not the attic – they live there) for the moment but leave the hall closed up … just in case. I am a very light sleeper and juts those few wing flutters woke me right up. After way too many night-time incursions, I have been very sensitive to flapping wings.  And it WAS a BIG moth …Whew!! Escaped  on that one!!  It took hours to get back to a broken sleep.  Pretty tired today.

Thank you for reading and let me know if you want more of my bat stories – those are one with actual bats.  Thanks for stopping by!!

~ © Diane Clancy