Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-35196587-20181231023946/@comment-35901641-20190118174850

Salt, I have a funny bat story. About 14 years ago when my youngest son Austin was about 10 years old he came and told us that he was hearing "noises" from the ceiling. One of us thought it might be a bat since he has one of those pull down attic staircases in his room. So Austin, his 14 year old brother (who just HAD to see what was going on!), my husband and I all crammed in to Austin's fairly small room to check out the situation. The bedroom door had to be either all the way open or practically all the way closed to allow the stairs to unfold, but if there was a bat in the attic I certainly didn't want it to be able to get beyond Austin's room, so we closed that door. We all sort of stood there staring at the ceiling as my husband pulled the rope so the panel and stairs would come down. Well sure enough, in a matter of seconds a bat flew into the room and pure pandemonium begins! The bat starts circling the room and we instinctively duck, one right after the other, as if doing "the wave" at a football game. My husband is freaked out and immediately tries to open the door to escape but the opening is not wide enough. I grab the blanket off Austin's bed thinking that I would toss it over the bat to subdue it. When I try and miss, Austin immediately dives down onto the blanket and begins trying to cover himself up with it. I want to make another attempt so I begin to struggle to get the blanket away from Austin while trying to keep one eye on the bat. My oldest son is across the room from me laughing hysterically as he repeatedly ducks each time the bat passes. My husband is making those same moves but yelling instead of laughing. Finally, the bat flies towards the closed window and disappears. The noise dies down as we each realize the bat is MIA. My husband, still standing by the semi closed door starts repeating "now what are you going to do, huh?" Austin increases his distance from the bats last known location, still partially wrapped-up in blanket. As I turn towards the window to try to locate the bat my oldest son comes over to help. Austin has his skateboard along with plenty of other "stuff" on the floor in front of the window and we begin to carefully poke around to locate the bat. My husband is definitely not happy when we can't find it. I finally peek behind the bookcase sitting just to the right of the window and see that poor little bat. It is so small even though it seemed huge minutes earlier. My husband has now put the stairs back up so he can leave the room. He doesn't feel like going through round two when that bat decides to fly again. I send one of the boys to locate an old toy butterfly net (yes, butterfly nets actually do exist outside of the Old Square and Fair in Darkwood) and the other to get an empty shoe box. The bat is staying very still and does not put up any kind of fight. I am not sure if it actually flew into the window but I feel sure the racket we made would have been pretty traumatizing. Especially since it can't "see" what is going on. I carefully used the net to pull it out far enough to cover with the box. A piece of cardboard between it and the wall trapped it inside so I could then take it outside and release. We could all laughed about it once the bat was out of the house, but poor Austin was never the same, constantly worrying that another bat would get into his room. Who could blame him?! For years he put duct tape over the tiny seems between the access panel and the ceiling. Whenever I went into the attic to put away Christmas decorations or whatever else I needed to store up there the tape would tear off. Then a few days later it would be taped up again. Poor kid!

Oops, I think I just figured out what a "word wall" is. It appears I may be adept at it, tee hee.