Going Batty

Last night Seth and I were sittin' round doing what every red blooded American male should be doing on a hot, humid, sweaty, mid-August night, watching the first pre-season FOOTBALL game of 2009. Sometime during the third quarter (which by the way means something different in August than what it does during the last three months of the calendar year. It's named the 3rd Quarter in August games because that's when the 3rd string players who are earning about $.75 a game get to strap it on and strut their stuff. In October, November and December it means you have less than 30 minutes of playing time to get it together or you only have to hang on for a little bit more. You are now being returned to your regular Blog...) I decided to get it going and announce to my audience, "I'm taking a shower." Several minutes later I rise like the morning fog out of a Blue Ridge Valley and shuffle off to my bedroom to prepare for the cleansing event. Upon entering the bedroom I am immediately snared by the power of my PC, my window to the cyber-world beyond. It sits there singing its Siren song, begging me to "Logon and check Facebook." Pinball machines sang the same song to me when I was in college. They even learned my name and would send it to me across the airwaves with their gentle hardly audible, "tic, tic, tic,tic".

I gave in and sat down. As my fingers were performing their dance across the keyboard conveying user name and password to the keepers of Facebook, I hear Seth moving in the living room. Having left him laying on the couch I knew that only one of two things had happened. He either decide he was going to try and beat me to the bathroom or it was time for him to retrieve nourishment from the kitchen.

Much to my soon to be amazement it was neither. What I heard was, "Where'd this bat come from?" That's not an unusual statement to hear at our house for the simple reason that for 12-months, 52-weeks a year Seth walks around carrying, swinging, or cleaning his baseball bat. The bat can be wood, metal or plastic. Seth will walk into the living room, strikes a pose with his bat and quiz us by saying, "Who stands like this?" At that point we can only hope that our answer is correct because if it isn't he continues with these charades until we get one correct. It is also customary to look before sitting on any of our furniture because one never knows when you may unexpectedly sit on a bat. That could be quite an experience.

Anyhow, Seth walks into my room with this 'Canary-eatin' smile and calmly says, "There's a big bat in the living room." Now Seth is smiling because he already knows that there is no way on God's Earth that I am going to believe him. Several years ago during the summer Seth and a neighbor boy came running out of the basement where they were watching TV saying there was a bat flying around down there. I looked for an hour and never found one. I searched the next day, nothing. To this day, years later, I still search for bat bones tucked away in some small seldom visited corner or crevasse of the basement.

In order to appease the child I cut the duct tape from my head that was holding me to the monitor of my computer and went to the living room. Clement Moore probably says it best when he said, "When what to my wondering eyes should appear...but a big brown bat! This guy was huge. He had close to a nine-foot wing span. His teeth were dripping with blood. He was singing a song only a misdirected fax machine could love. He obviously was drawn to the lights of our house thinking it was some kind of airport or landing strip.

Seth looked to me to get us out of this situation. We both thought, "Where's mom?" Not that we needed the help, we just knew she wasn't going to believe us (please reread two paragraphs back). I quickly assessed the situation and had learned from watching the mid-August football game that I had to defense this guy. Contain, contain, contain. Just like handling a scrambling quarterback, only this time it was an aerial show.

There are three doorways in our living room. One leads to the kitchen but I felt we were OK there as both our side door and basement doors were open thus blocking the living room exit by appearing to be a solid wall to a radar guided mammal. I stood between the bat and the exit to the rest of the living spaces. My concern was that this uninvited nighttime guest would want the 50-cent tour of the house and I'd lose any advantage I now had in securing his eventual capture and release. Seth's job was to go to the front door which exited back to nature and Batland, and hold it open. As I tried to herd our wayward wondering friend towards the door the strangest thought went through my mind. Here I am darting back and forth across the living room, waving a couch pillow above my head, telling Seth to keep the door open, and offering encouraging words to a deaf mammal that's squeaking at me and dripping blood. All of our windows are open, the lights are on and I am sure a crowd is gathering curbside to watch this guy finally loosing his mind.

The bat finally succumbed. He landed on the wall above the front door. I swear I heard heavy breathing. His, mine or Seth's, I don't know for sure at this time but at that time I thought it was his. I shooshed him off the wall with a Kohl's ad and he dropped to the floor. Seth somehow now appeared behind me. Not sure how he got there but he was in the right place at the right time. I mentioned to anyone listening that I need to get something with which to capture him. Seth returned post haste with his net, butterfly or fish didn't really matter at that time it was a net with a long handle. With a little resistance from Mr. Bat he was mine! Only now what do I do. He's trapped under a net on my living room floor. I needed to slide something under the net in order to secure the trap. Seth got a piece of stiff cardboard which I slid under our captive who was under the net. I carefully, oh so carefully, picked up the snare and asked Seth to open the front door so I could release the bat back to whence he came.

As I stepped across the threshold and out onto the porch my mind registered, for that moment at least, a somewhat insignificant event, the sound of a closing tight of our front door. Moving to the edge of our front porch I released the bat. He was shilouetted against the glow the cell phones made from the crowd that had gathered and was now blocking traffic on our street. One thing that is difficult to ascertain about flying objects is being able to tell in which direction they are moving when in a straight line of your vision. Are they going away from you or are they coming right at you. This was the paradox in which I now found myself. The recently released bat seemed to be moving away from me but the Doppler affect of his high pitched song said otherwise. When I realized that he was aiming directly for my face the 'fight or flight' instinct kicked into full gear. As I turned to go back into the house to get away my mind dug up from its short-term memory a certain sound of a certain front door be firmly secured only moment earlier. Duck!

I saw the bat circle and resume the eating of night bugs. I'm sure when he got back to the bat cave or where ever bats return to, he'll have a heck of a story to tell about what all he had to go through just too get the Eagle's score.

Ann walked in and said, "What's going on here while I was away?"