Batgirl

Over the weekend we enjoyed a lovely visit from the Holst-Grubbe family, who owned our house for 22 years. We will blog about that visit soon.

During the visit, George Holst-Grubbe asked a seemingly innocent question:

"So, have you had any bats in the house yet?"

"No," we said, chuckling. Of course we wouldn't have bats in the house. We have an ADT security system, a caretaker and a cleaning person, for goodness sake!

Well.

Today at approximately 11:00am, I decided to bring my laptop out to the porch for a change of scenery from the dining room table, where I've been working a few days this week to avoid the brutal heat wave in Manhattan.

I sat down in my chair with my laptop, power cord, cordless phone, headset, Diet A&W root beer, highlighter pen and a stack of papers. As I plugged in, I noticed something moving in the corner of the porch.

It looked like a frog.

A very dark, creepy, ugly, beady-eyed, evil-looking frog.

I opened the outside porch door and tried to use a chair to nudge the little critter outside. The froglike thing hissed at me and... shot out a wing. A definite, no-doubt-about-it bat wing.

(Cue Batman theme song.)

I immediately closed all the doors, ran inside and put a towel under the porch door to keep the bat from getting inside the house.

Then I took a nap. (Hey, it's really hot and I woke up early this morning.)

After my nap, Evan called and I told him about the bat. While I was telling the story, I looked up and there was the bat himself (or herself, who knows?), climbing up the exposed brick in our dining room.

Country lesson: Towels are not an effective tool to keep bats out of one's house.

With Evan on the phone, I grabbed my laptop and cord and barricaded myself in the mud room.

"Do you have enough water?" Evan asked, in full emergency mode.

I did.

While Evan called Country Caretaker, I then proceeded to do exactly what one should never do in a situation like this: I Googled "bats and rabies."

Here is the first piece of information I found: Rabies can be confirmed only in a laboratory. However, any bat that is active by day (like, say, at 11:00am?), is found in a place where bats are not usually seen (for example, in a room in your home or on the lawn) (or, perhaps, your porch and dining room?), or is unable to fly (and, therefore, is crawling around behind a chair?), is far more likely than others to be rabid. Such bats are often the most easily approached. Therefore, it is best never to handle any bat.

I decided to leave the house and go outside.

About 10 minutes later, Adam from Country Caretaker arrived. I have never been so happy to see that big burgundy truck. Adam heroically went into the house. I heard some commotion and then he came out with the bat caught in his hands between two baseball caps.

You will be pleased to know that he asked if I wanted to take a picture of the bat for our blog.

I said no. Sorry to disappoint our loyal readers, but I just couldn't do it. Instead, I thanked Adam, called Evan to report the good news, went back into the house and poured myself a very large glass of Tocai from Rick's Wine & Spirits.

So, that is the story of Lindsey and the bat.

The End. (I hope.)

Posted by Lindsey