Bats in the Belfry

Well, actually, not in the belfry, but in the bedroom. Imagine this cozy little scene circa midnight last night. Philippa is in the bathroom brushing her teeth, having just come in from a wild night of dancing at the Greek Festival down the street. Merman is sound asleep and I am in bed reading. All of a sudden out of the periphery of my vision I catch this dark, fast movement in the air. I glance up to see this huge thing swooping around our room! I duck my head under the sheets, fast, but not before I poke the sleeping Merman hard in the sides. "There's something flying in the room!" I yell. He mumbles "It's only a creature" in a tone of voice that says Why Are You Bothering ME I'm Sleeping with a subtext of Swat The Thing If It's Bothering You. I poke him again, harder, and he sits upright to see a big bat doing figure eights around the room.

I peek from underneath the sheets to see the man of the hour leaping out of bed. "It's a bat, Philippa!" Instead of shreiking from the bathroom as you would have expected, teenage daughter says "Thank god! I thought I was having hallucinations when I came in the door." This gave me the courage to get out of bed to take a look. I figure if Philippa is not going to be a shrinking violet in the face of close encounters with nature, neither would I.

It was amazing. We opened the windows and doors and watched as the bat circled and swooped for about ten minutes before it flew out. It was going so fast that Merman shouted that there were two of them--it really did appear that way! The whole experience was waaaay cool.

Now we have to figure out how it got in the house at midnight...