So, last week's highlight: Another bat found its way into our house. Our new cats are not as clever as Old Shaysie was, though, and this varmint was not so dumb as the one that got itself stuck in the door. Not Your Average Blogger had to take this one out -- and he did so, unassisted.
It all started in late afternoon. I was outside trying to fix the lights on a recalcitrant Christmas decoration when the Young Prince came flying out of the house. "Mom mom mom there is a bird no a bat well something FLYING in my room!"
"There's not a bird in your room. Come on."
There is SOMETHING! And it is FLYING! "
Then I vaguely recalled hearing the cats going a mite crazy in the room over my head while I was flipping through the mail -- but that had meant nothing at the time because they are constantly chasing each other around the house. So, hm. Went up to look, and yes, he was right. There it was, hanging all ugly and batlike and upside down from the heating vent over the kid's bed. Shudders. We shut the door while I pondered what to do. Called my grandmother, since I knew she'd dealt with bats in her house, and she said, "Well, it takes two of us -- your grandfather pins them with a tennis racquet and then I scoop them into a container as he gradually lifts the racquet."
But alas, I was the only adult home, and the more I thought about standing on a bed, trying to whack a flying creature to the ground and then somehow maneuvering it into a bag, the more absurd it sounded. I asked the YP: "You want to pin it down or bag it up?"
The YP: "What? Me? NEITHER. Let's wait and let the big man deal with it."
Me: "The Big Man? This is what you call your dad now?"
YP: "That is who he is. And he can get rid of the bat."
Well. I heartily agreed. So we shut the door and put a towel under it, and left the cats in there to hunt. I went up a few hours later -- and the thing was gone. Not dead, just vanished. The cats were sprawled out on the kid's bed, but no rodent was to be seen. Not under his bed. Not up in the boxspring. Not under his dresser, in his closet, behind his bookshelves. I moved his stuffed animals looking for it and found nothing. I then moved on to examine the closet, and nearly had a heart attack when the kid started shrieking as one of the toys fell off the shelf and hit him in the back, sending him flying out the door and down the stairs convinced he was being attacked.
NYAB came home and likewise scoured the room. Nothing.
Needless to say, after all that, there was no way the kid was going to sleep in his room that night. Sigh.
My schedule is such that I often pass out for the night around the same time the kid does. Which is why I was upstairs blissfully unaware when NYAB, after making the rounds of checking on his sleeping family, wandered back downstairs, saw the thing flapping around the living room, and whacked it.
I'm still a little creeped out wondering how it got into the house, and I am a lot creeped out at how it got from an upstairs bedroom to the downstairs living room when it was GONE, FREAKING GONE, because the only answer I can come up with is the heating vents and that is just not something I want to think about as I fall asleep at night right in the path of the air current.
In other news, Christmas packages are all mailed! The decorating is done! (Twice, even. NYAB and the YP decorated the family tree on Saturday while I worked, and then it fell over -- we suspect the bat-less cats -- so the YP and I undecorated and re-decorated on Sunday.) Baking is in full force and I'm in a mood where I might even try cinnamon rolls this year!
Next Sunday, come hell or another goddamn weekend session of Congress, we are having our cookie party. Are y'all coming?
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