Saturday, May 1, 2010

Nomenclature

If you have any idea why I titled this blog that, you're better than me. At life, possibly. The word has been stuck in my head today, like that popcorn piece that always seems to get stuck in my gums and then I have to floss my teeth, no matter what the time, place, or extenuating circumstances or life sucks. Except the word isn't inherently annoying like that popcorn piece. So really it's not the same thing at all.

I'm in a strange mood today.

Perhaps it is because I am slightly rabid, although I certainly hope not, as I suspect that that would be a negative for the child incubating in my uterus.

You see, Shane and I - and Rhi - live in a house. We rent said house. The house appears to be just like any other house, except that the outside has a Santa Claus tethered to the porch, and it's May. No one quite knows why the Santa is there; it appeared quite randomly one day and, honestly, I am too lazy to move it. I realize that it is possibly 5 pounds of plastic, so this shouldn't be difficult, but it seems like a considerable amount of effort somehow, so Santa stays where he is. On the plus side, I image that anyone who has thought for even a second about robbing our home has come to the (correct) conclusion that anyone who has a plastic Santa tethered to their porch in May probably does not have overflowing heaps of riches.

Anyways, I digress.

So, my house seems perfectly normal, despite the fact that it's a little more festive than yours, but I remain convinced that, once upon a time, Bruce Wayne lived here. Now, Bruce Wayne was not known for his humble beginnings, so I have no idea why he lived in a rental in a small, poor, and utterly lame Missouri town, but there is just no other explanation for the fact that bats are attracted to this house like the plague.

(I'm segueing here to mention that, yes, I know Batman was not actually known for his association with bats in the comic books and or movies, but this is my blog and I can write whatever I want. Also, if you were a bat, and a famous superhero had your name in his heroic moniker, wouldn't you want to visit his house? You totally would.)

Anyways, back to the bats and why I may or may not be rabid.

So, Shane has lived in this house since...um...last spring, I think. So a year(ish)? And I've lived here a few months less, but since he got the house while we were together, it goes without saying that I've spent a lot of time here. And since I have been spending time and/or living here, there have been no less than 24* bats that have somehow maneuvered into the house at night time, intent on killing us all. Or flying around in circles around the house, which curiously has no doors on anything but the bathroom in mysterious patterns that may, if correctly interpreted, lead to the truth about life and/or the endtimes. Or it could just be some crazy bat game that they get off on. Who knows.

We have literally no clue where these bats originate from. It began last spring, ended over the winter, and, as of last night, has begun anew.

Usually these nocturnal visits occur while someone is still awake, but, last night, Shane apparently woke up to the interesting and unmistakable sound of a bat flying through our bedroom. So, being extra heroic, he leaped from bed, suited up for battle (and by that, you should picture him grabbing a blanket and pillow to chase the bat, knock it down, and catch it, and he was probably wearing Halo boxers and a t-shirt. Hey, I believe my loyal readers have a right to know all about Shane's studliness as a bat avenger. [wait, that sounds like he's avenging the bats, and not us. Ah, well, you get the point.])

So Shane apparently chased the bat into our kitchen, where it landed on a little shelf next to the cabinet that I never use. Assuming that he had beaten the bat into submission (but not, for my animal loving friends, having hit it at all, since Shane refuses to kill the bats and instead catches them and releases them outside where they can make their way back into our house for whatever fiendish purposes they have,) he left it lying there and went to get something to pick it up with. This is probably due to the fact that I have long lectured him about bats and rabies and how he is NEVER allowed to touch a bat with his bare hands EVER as I refuse to watch him get rabies shots and also he has no insurance for rabies shots, and so I would obviously just have to shoot him, a la Ol' Yeller, and that was a very sad book/movie and not something I want to do to my fiance. So, while he is gone, the bat scoots itself into a corner of said shelf, and is hovering there, looking pathetic and not evil when Shane gets back. Then, because bats are sneaky, sneaky jerkfaces who want you to think they're all nice when they're really bloodsucking harbingers of death, it, quick as a wink, shoves itself into a space roughly as big as the one between these two lines / / and goes behind our cabinet.

Shane, being extra heroic (and also knowing his fiancee will kill him in the face if she finds out he left a bat in the house while her pregnant self and her small child are asleep in said house since she is utterly convinced that bats are there to steal her soul or infect us all with rabies that will be totally incurable and turn us into zombies, somehow,) attempts to get the bat out by poking it with a spatula, but this apparently doesn't make the bat feel like leaving the area behind the cabinet. So, he seals up the space around the cabinet with plastic bags from grocery shopping (and that is why you should always save your bags for recycling, ladies and gentleman.)

Except, at some point in the night, the bat escaped.

I know this because after I woke up this morning, and puttered around the house, and woke Shane up, and ran some errands, I looked up at the ceiling to discover the bat, hanging and asleep, off of the trim stuff that has an actual proper name that I can't remember or bother to Google right now.

Being the brave soul that I am, I yelled, "Shane! Bat!" and barricaded myself and Rhi in the bathroom while he released the demon bat outside. (No joke, he didn't even touch it with his hands, and I made him scrub them afterwards for fear of him being infected by bat funk or something. That's how paranoid I am.)

So that's fun.

Seriously, I have no clue how these bats get in. There are no open spots in the house that appear to court a bat entering, and the only window that was cracked was in our room and is fairly new, with no holes or gaps in the screens. It is a mystery to me as to why bats seem to think our home is the bee's knees and why they don't just stay outside and eat bugs or whatever like normal bats do. Are we doing something, inadvertently, to attract them? I don't know, and you get a surprisingly few helpful entries when you try to Google such things.

I was, however, joking about the rabies. I'm 98% sure that any of us would have known if a bat landed on us through the night, and I checked myself and Rhi over for bite/scratch marks just in case. Although Shane is coughing a lot and acting quite grumpy today. Hmmmm...

*readies shotgun, just in case*





*by 24 up there, I meant 6. I'm prone to exaggeration sometimes. Still, try to tell me 6 bats isn't a wtf-inducing amount. You can't.

Also, I would never shoot Shane. Ever. Unless he really did become a rabid zombie and I had to to save humanity, and, man, even then, it'd be really hard and I'd cry a lot.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh now *shakes head* bats aren't completely awful. They used to come into my mom's house way to often though! You may have already checked this out, if not you should http://www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-bats.htm

Star said...

Um, that page officially terrified me. Bats can carry fucking EBOLA? Really? And did you see the picture of the, like 7 million bats clustered together?!? *shudders*

I did laugh at the "cowards locked in the bathroom" part. I am so a coward in a bathroom.

The issue is, we can't figure out where they come from. At all. It makes no sense. You'd think if we had a bat colony we'd have stumbled onto it by now. It's not a big house and we actually, for varied reasons, don't have a lot of excess stuff in it. So I'm totally befuddled.

And I'm only anti-bat when they are in my house. When they're outside, they're fantastic, I see their place in the world, I like that they eat bugs, blah blah blah. But not unlike spiders, that only applies when they stay on their turf. My house is my turf, bats, and I will kill you if you enter it.

Well, I would if I wasn't such a coward. And Shane won't since he's so love all creatures. But we'll, um, encourage you to leave or something.

Stupid bats.

Unknown said...

Moulding.

Unknown said...

Think of how small that crack was that the bat shoved himself into. Looking from the ground you probably can't see where they are creeping in at. I suggest getting a cat, they will help run the bat down and give you entertainment in the process. :-) I've had many a cat mark left on me in the middle of the night when the cats would bound through the upstairs to hunt bats.

gardenofsimple said...

Do you have an attic, or eaves along the outside of the house? Bats will nest year after year in the same space if it's not boarded up. Attics are popular, and open eaves along the top of the house

Sara said...

That would creep me out! You need to call that Billy dude!