Bats in the Belfry

Strange things happen to me. I'm a weirdness magnet. I often say that if a frozen chicken were to fall out of a cloudless summer sky, it would land at my feet. I'm not complaining, really, I just spend a significant amount of time wondering what the hell that was all about.

So I came home late the other day and found a bat in the house. See? Strange. And it's not the first time either. Stranger still. Has this ever happened to you? I didn't think so.

The bat was hanging upside down on the intake grate for the air conditioner above the basement door. I woke Tremayne to help me free the bat. He's not acclimated to this weirdness magnet thing quite yet I don't think. He still looks at me funny when I say things like, "Babe, would you get up and help me get this bat out of the house?"

I climbed up on a step stool with a leather glove on my hand and tried to coax him into my hand while Tre stood on the landing of the stairs to discourage him from heading that way. The bat backed up and opened his little mouth as wide as possible to hiss at me, exposing tiny, razor-sharp teeth. Very fierce for a kiwi in a jacket and I told him as much.

He left the relative safety of his perch and flew around the house for a bit, buzzing me like a jet in Top Gun. I think this is the coolest thing ever. If you could have seen me then, you would have witnessed an expression of childlike wonder I'm sure. It's amazing to me how they fly, the silence of it, their wings only flapping sporadically and sounding of a silk curtain fluttering in a light breeze. They seem to hang in the air, like a slowly falling leaf on an autumn afternoon. Finally, but too soon for me, he found the open French doors to the deck and flew into the darkness.

It's not such a bad deal to be a weirdness magnet when cool stuff happens.