The other night I was sitting in the dining room relaxing and eating some ice cream. The lights were all out, I was all alone in the house, and I was watching "Precious" on my computer screen. I had just finished my last show at Comedy Sportz, and was relaxing before I went to bed. All of the sudden, something started making a strange chattering screeching noise and some crashing noises told me things were being knocked on the floor. Before I could get up, or even turn around to look, a bat whacked me on the back of the head! A real, honest to goodness bat, inside my house.
In the split second it took me to jump up, I noticed my roommate's cats in hot pursuit of the bat. I dashed into the living room to get away, and the BAT CHASED ME! It was literally chasing me, chattering and squealing away. At this point I was convinced that it had rabies, because what rational tiny animal chases a big animal? I should also note that in a dark creepy house, alone at three in the morning, with a bat chasing me, I wasn't thinking very rationally. I became much more scared than I should have been. My bedroom door was open, so I ran in there as quickly as I could, slamming the door tightly behind me. I paused to breathe and heard the same chattering behind me, but louder and angrier. I HAD TRAPPED THE BAT IN THE DOOR! His wing was stuck in the door and his body and other wing were on my side of the door, angrily flapping around. I was now trapped in my room with a furious bat. I couldn't just go open the door because the bat would fall on my arm and/or attack me!
At this point I decided the most rational course of action would be to flip out and call Jon while weeping. Jon was about four hours away at his bachelor party. He tried to calm me down and convince me that I had to open the door, trap the bat in a bag and humanly kill it. I knew all this, of course, but having Jon talk to me calmed me down enough (sort of) to actually do it. I left my bedroom through another door and opened the door with the bat in it from the opposite side. I opened the door quickly and then shut it again so that the bat wouldn't get me on his way out of the door. Well, this turned out to be a bad choice, because by the time I opened the door a second time, the bat had hidden somewhere in my room. I could hear him chattering angrily, but couldn't find him for a few minutes. I had hoped the dogs would help me, but they were surprisingly apathetic about the wounded animal in their midst. This from one dog that regularly catches and eats wild animals and another dog that literally swallowed a half-rotten baby rabbit the other day. No help with the wounded bat though.
I finally found the bat in a shoe and was able to get it into an old cereal box. He clearly had a broken wing. I was crying pretty hard still, from a lot of different emotions. I was still scared of the bat (I know they're tiny, but they're scary in the middle of the night with their loud noises and tiny sharp teeth and ugly faces!), I was tired and stressed out from all the wedding plans/unemployment/moving apartments/uncertainty for the future, I felt really bad for breaking its wing and I knew I was going to have to kill it. For all these reasons, I was a big mess.
I was finally able to trap it in a cereal box and take it outside and step on it. I felt really bad about it. I knew it was the most humane thing to do, but I still felt awful.
It wasn't until the next day that I realized what I SHOULD have done, of course. When the bat was bleeping chasing me, I should have just RUN OUTSIDE! Run into my room, then there is still a bat in the rest of the house....stupid.
