i was minding my own business working by the light of the laptop when, out of the corner of my eye, i thought i saw something unusually large soundlessly swoop unusually close to my computer screen. just as i looked up and told myself that it was probably nothing, the Definitely Something came in for a closer look before gracefully making an abrupt hairpin turn and flying off into the next room.

sure enough, we discovered Mr. Big Brown Bat literally hanging out in the sun room.

now, i’m not really frightened of bats. the rationale part of me knows that they’re harmless flying mammals that, at the very least, keep the insect population under control thanks to their ravenous insectivorian appetite. but the older, reptilian, fight-or-flight part of my brain, doesn’t like to cooperate in these situations and insists on going into manual override, creating the irrational fear that the bat is GOING TO DIVE BOMB ME AND GET TANGLED IN MY HAIR! according to my reptilian brain it’s a near certainty that i will be reduced to running around the house shrieking like a school girl while frantically trying to untangle the evil, vile creature from my hair before kill! kill! killing! it.

every so often the rational part of me chimes in and asks if i’ve ever had a bat entangled in my not very long hair, or even if i’ve ever known anyone who has, regardless of their hair length. no, i haven’t. but still, the reptilian part of my brain remains resolute that i must have read something about it happening somewhere on the internet, probably right around the time i read about the poor sap investigating the itch in his ear, which turned out to be a nest of earwigs.

eventually i reached an agreement with all of me that i would try to coax the bat out of the house by swiping at it with a broom, hoping it was smart enough to interpret that as a sign that i came in peace and would really love to live in harmonious coexistence an long as their was no cohabitation clause in our agreement. my reptilian brain sulked but could make no promises that it wouldn’t get all medieval on the bat if it even looked the least bit like it had a hankering to go for my hair.

with kris standing by the front door, i swooped with the broom as time slowed down and i saw the bat launch from its perch and make a few this-way, no-that-way, no-really-that-a-way changes to its flight path before heading into the living room and out the front door which kris promptly slammed shut.

all in all, it seemed to be a perfectly executed maneuver and we congratulated ourselves on the fine bit of bat-human teamwork. except that it wasn’t. when we stepped out to shut the door to the enclosed porch, we noticed that Mr. Big Brown Bat had decided not to go the distance and had instead landed one of the many porch windows.

and so, back it was to the conversations between myselves, as we repeated the process over and over and over again, each time resulting in the bat simply flying from one end of the porch to the other.

just as we decided that maybe Mr. Big Brown Bat had won this battle, mauja finally poked his head in the open door and asked us ( with a stern “rarrrgh! rarrgh!” ) what on earth we were making such a commotion about.

immediately upon hearing mauja, the bat promptly and decisively made its exit out the door.