so, kris and i were discussing The Bat Invasion and were slowly coming to peace with the fact that in all likelihood there were more bats in the house or freely coming and going by whatever means necessary, since after we found the bats in the fan, we discovered new, fresh guano in odin’s bedroom and little bits here and there scattered around the house. but at least we could find some comfort in the fact that it seemed like, for the most part, they were happy to keep to themselves.

as we headed up a very dark stairwell for bed, kris let out a little screech and whispered ( so as not to wake odin ), “a bat just flew by my ear!”. sigh. so we quickly turned on the lights and scanned around for signs of a bat. nothing. i wondered aloud if possibly maybe she thought she felt a bat because we were just talking about them and the stairwell really was very dark and spooky. yes, i know, it really was the kind of comment that i probably should have left to myself. moments later she brought odin into our room on the chance that the bat she was sure she saw was hiding out in his room.

the following morning, bright and early, i walked down the stairs towards the bathroom, yawning and wondering if there really was a bat. as i rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked down and took a double take and then a triple.

a big brown bat was swimming in the toilet.

i kid you not. his head was above water and he was swimming around in slow circles. i quickly closed the lid, relieved – ahem – that i didn’t have to do anything that required sitting on the toilet in the middle of the night and i pondered what to do next.

at first, i thought it might have injured itself or maybe was on the way to drowning, but i could hear it trying to flap its wings with the toilet lid down while i took a shower and finally concluded that if it were trying to drown itself it probably wasn’t going to have the job finished before i went to work. i tossed out the idea of just leaving him in the toilet until he met his end, but kris voted down that proposal. then, and remember this is before i’ve had any coffee, i thought i might be able to scoop him out with a spatula, but after a few attempts, i realized that the chances of him happily sitting on the end of a spatula were vanishingly small. perhaps i could grab him with a plastic over my hand and close up the bag until i got outside! perfect! luckily, i remembered that bats do actually have teeth they were probably capable of piercing a plastic bag. so, what to do?

i have to admit i was a little impressed with myself as i macgyvered a pair of oven mitts into bat removal protection gear.

the bat was not happy. and i’m fairly certain that he was schreeching something awful outside of the frequency range human ears can hear.

we walked outside and i calmly told him that that he better go off and tell all his friends that if i saw him or any of his kind in my house again then, well, then things were going to get ugly.